Get Substack publication categories

Try in Playground

Retrieve the public publication category directory with numeric IDs, names, slugs and emoji metadata.

GET/v1/substack/categoriesx-api-key

Headers

Get your API key

x-api-keystringrequiredheader

Your ScrapeAtlas customer key. Create one on /account/ and set SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY.

Query parameters

This endpoint takes no parameters.

Response fields

requestIdstring

Request correlation UUID.

Source request attempts, decoded bytes and elapsed milliseconds.

accounting.upstreamRequestsinteger

Number of upstream request attempts.

≥ 0

accounting.responseBytesinteger

Decoded source bytes read during this request.

≥ 0

accounting.durationMsnumber

Elapsed request time in milliseconds.

≥ 0

successboolean

True when usable data is returned; inspect status and coverage.

statusenum

success or partial for usable data; failed or challenged for a failure response.

one of: success, partial

sourceUrlstring

Canonical public URL for the requested publication, post or writer.

absolute HTTPS URL

fetchedAtstring

UTC retrieval timestamp.

Result coverage and extraction warnings.

coverage.sourcestring

Public Substack web data.

coverage.completeboolean

Whether the returned result has no reported omissions.

coverage.warningsstring[]

Warnings that explain partial results or missing fields.

coverage.orderenumoptional

Reported result order: source_order or ranked.

one of: source_order, ranked

Publication topic categories in source order.

up to 100 items

categories.idinteger

Numeric category ID.

0 – 9007199254740991

categories.namestring

Category name.

categories.slugstring

Category URL slug.

categories.emojistringnullable

Published category emoji.

HTTP 200 returns the success variant. Check status: partial means usable data with warnings, and failed or challenged requests carry a failure object described in Errors & responses.

Error codes

HTTP	failure.code	Meaning
400	`invalid_request`	Missing, duplicated, invalid or unsupported request parameters.
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid service API key.
404	`not_found`	The requested publication, post or profile was not found.
422	`restricted_page`	The requested content requires additional access.
422	`unsupported_page`	The source did not provide the expected record.
502	`upstream_challenged`	The source challenged the request.
502	`upstream_rate_limited`	The source rate limited the request.
502	`upstream_error`	A source request failed.
502	`response_too_large`	Source data exceeded the response byte limit.
502	`payload_too_complex`	Source data exceeded the traversal depth or node limit.
502	`unsafe_redirect`	The source returned an unexpected redirect.
502	`request_limit`	The request exhausted its source-attempt budget.
503	`busy`	All worker request slots are in use.
504	`timeout`	The request exceeded its deadline.
200	`partial`	Usable data was returned with coverage warnings.

Code example

curl "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"
    }
  }
);

const data = await response.json();
console.log(data.status, data);

type Result = {
  status: "success" | "partial" | "failed" | "challenged";
  requestId: string;
  [field: string]: unknown;
};

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories",
  {
    headers: {
      "x-api-key": process.env.SCRAPEATLAS_API_KEY!
    }
  }
);

const data = (await response.json()) as Result;
if (data.status === "failed" || data.status === "challenged") {
  throw new Error(`Substack request failed: ${data.requestId}`);
}
console.log(data);

import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={},
    timeout=60,
)
data = response.json()
print(data["status"], data)

package main

import (
	"encoding/json"
	"fmt"
	"net/http"
)

func main() {
	req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories", nil)
	req.Header.Set("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
	resp, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	defer resp.Body.Close()

	var data map[string]interface{}
	json.NewDecoder(resp.Body).Decode(&data)
	fmt.Println(data["status"], data)
}

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        var client = HttpClient.newHttpClient();
        var request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create("https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/categories"))
            .GET()
            .header("x-api-key", "YOUR_API_KEY")
            .build();
        var response = client.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
        System.out.println(response.body());
    }
}

Use your sa_live_… customer key at https://api.scrapeatlas.com.

Responses

Successful result. Synthetic example validated against the runtime contract.

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "success",
  "requestId": "00000000-0000-4000-8000-000000000001",
  "sourceUrl": "https://substack.com/",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_web",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": [],
    "order": "source_order"
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 12000,
    "durationMs": 500
  },
  "categories": [
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Culture",
      "slug": "culture",
      "emoji": null
    }
  ]
}

Missing, duplicated, invalid or unsupported request parameters.

{
  "requestId": "9d2f1c0a-6b1e-4c7d-9a8e-2f3b4c5d6e7f",
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 0,
    "responseBytes": 0,
    "durationMs": 0
  },
  "success": false,
  "status": "failed",
  "failure": {
    "code": "invalid_request",
    "message": "Invalid request: missing, duplicate, unsupported or malformed parameters."
  }
}