How to Get Notified When a Substack Publication Posts Something New
TL;DR: Every Substack publication has a hidden RSS feed at publicationname.substack.com/feed . You can watch it with an RSS reader, poll it with a 20-line Python script, or — if you want alerts without running infrastructure — use a scheduled monitor like our Substack New-Post Monitor . Below are all three methods, working code included. I follow about a dozen Substack publications. For months my…
Substack publications contain a hidden RSS feed accessible at the publication's URL followed by "/feed". For example, for the publication "stratechery.substack.com", the RSS feed is "https://stratechery.substack.com/feed". This feed provides titles, links, and timestamps of the latest posts without requiring any API key or web scraping. Most people are unaware of this feature, which could result in missing important updates.
There are three methods to get notified when a Substack publication posts something new.
The first method involves using an RSS reader to monitor the feed. It takes only two minutes and does not cost anything. Simply point an RSS reader like Feedly, Inoreader, or NetNewsWire at the feed URL, and you'll see new posts alongside your other followed publications. However, this method is a "pull" system, meaning you need to open the reader to see new posts, not receive them as soon as they go live. If real-time notifications are a priority, consider the next methods.
The second method involves polling the feed with a Python script (20 lines of code). This approach sends notifications via Slack, Discord, email, or SMS when new posts appear. The script maintains a list of seen post IDs in a JSON file to prevent duplicate alerts. Users can set up scheduled runs using cron jobs, with a default interval of 15 minutes.
This method works well for a small number of publications but can become cumbersome when managing multiple cron jobs and state files for numerous sources. Furthermore, if the script crashes during operation, alerts may be missed or duplicated. Despite these limitations, this method is free and straightforward.
The third method provides a scheduled monitor called "Substack New-Post Monitor," a small Apify actor that watches a selected publication and reports new posts. Users provide the publication URL and a schedule, and the new posts are delivered to the output dataset. This dataset can then be integrated with Slack, email, or webhooks via Apify's integrations.
This method requires no infrastructure, as it handles the tedious aspects like state management and notification routing. The actor is priced per result and remains inexpensive, even when no new posts are found.
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