Get a Substack post’s comments

Try in Playground

Retrieve comment text, author details, reaction counts and replies. Parent IDs and depth link each reply to its discussion.

GET/v1/substack/post/commentsx-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

urlstringrequiredquery

Required HTTPS Substack post URL in the /p/slug form, up to 1,024 characters. Tracking parameters are removed.

max 1024 chars

Examplehttps://example.substack.com/p/example-article

limitstringquery

Optional maximum comment records, 1–100; default 50.

Example50

depthstringquery

Optional maximum comment levels including top-level comments, 1–8; default 3.

Example3

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

postIdinteger

Numeric post ID.

0 – 9007199254740991

Comment and reply records with parentId and depth for rebuilding the conversation.

up to 100 items

comments.idinteger

Numeric comment ID.

0 – 9007199254740991

comments.bodystringnullable

Published comment text.

comments.body_jsonobjectnullable

Published rich-text document with formatting and links.

comments.publication_idintegernullable

Publication ID.

comments.post_idintegernullable

Post ID.

comments.user_idintegernullable

Comment author’s numeric user ID.

comments.ancestor_pathstringnullable

Source-reported ancestor path.

comments.typestringnullable

Comment type reported by Substack.

comments.deletedbooleannullable

Published deletion flag.

comments.datestringnullable

Comment publication timestamp.

comments.edited_atstringnullable

Comment edit timestamp.

comments.namestringnullable

Public commenter name.

comments.photo_urlstringnullable

Commenter image URL.

comments.handlestringnullable

Public commenter handle.

comments.user_slugstringnullable

Public commenter profile slug.

comments.reaction_countintegernullable

Comment reaction count.

comments.reactionsobject

Reaction counts keyed by reaction type.

comments.restacksintegernullable

Comment restack count.

comments.children_countintegernullable

Source-reported reply count.

comments.parentIdintegernullable

Parent comment ID, or null for a top-level comment.

comments.depthinteger

Reply depth; top-level comments have depth zero.

≥ 0

commentCountinteger

Number of comment records returned.

≥ 0

maxDepthinteger

Maximum reply depth in the returned records.

≥ 0

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/post/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.substack.com%2Fp%2Fexample-article&limit=50&depth=3" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.scrapeatlas.com/v1/substack/post/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.substack.com%2Fp%2Fexample-article&limit=50&depth=3",
  {
    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/post/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.substack.com%2Fp%2Fexample-article&limit=50&depth=3",
  {
    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/post/comments",
    headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
    params={
        "url": "https://example.substack.com/p/example-article",
        "limit": "50",
        "depth": "3"
    },
    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/post/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.substack.com%2Fp%2Fexample-article&limit=50&depth=3", 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/post/comments?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexample.substack.com%2Fp%2Fexample-article&limit=50&depth=3"))
            .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://example.substack.com/p/example-article",
  "fetchedAt": "2026-10-06T00:00:00.000Z",
  "coverage": {
    "source": "public_web",
    "complete": true,
    "warnings": [],
    "order": "source_order"
  },
  "accounting": {
    "upstreamRequests": 1,
    "responseBytes": 12000,
    "durationMs": 500
  },
  "postId": 301,
  "comments": [
    {
      "id": 501,
      "body": "Synthetic reader comment.",
      "body_json": null,
      "publication_id": 101,
      "post_id": 301,
      "user_id": 2001,
      "ancestor_path": "",
      "type": "comment",
      "deleted": false,
      "date": "2026-10-05T01:00:00.000Z",
      "edited_at": null,
      "name": "Example Reader",
      "photo_url": null,
      "handle": "example_reader",
      "user_slug": "example_reader",
      "reaction_count": 3,
      "reactions": {
        "❤": 3
      },
      "restacks": 0,
      "children_count": 1,
      "parentId": null,
      "depth": 0
    },
    {
      "id": 502,
      "body": "Synthetic reply.",
      "body_json": null,
      "publication_id": 101,
      "post_id": 301,
      "user_id": 2001,
      "ancestor_path": "501",
      "type": "comment",
      "deleted": false,
      "date": "2026-10-05T01:00:00.000Z",
      "edited_at": null,
      "name": "Example Reader",
      "photo_url": null,
      "handle": "example_reader",
      "user_slug": "example_reader",
      "reaction_count": 1,
      "reactions": {
        "❤": 1
      },
      "restacks": 0,
      "children_count": 0,
      "parentId": 501,
      "depth": 1
    }
  ],
  "commentCount": 2,
  "maxDepth": 1
}

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."
  }
}