Ghost Explore Newsletter Directory Scraper

Scrapes the official Ghost Explore newsletter directory at explore.ghost.org — Ghost's own curated, first-party index of professional newsletters built on the Ghost platform.

Returns a ranked, structured list of publications with member counts, newsletter URLs, descriptions, primary categories, staff social links, and revenue signals extracted from owner testimonials.

What you get

Each record includes:

Field	Description
publication_slug	Ghost Explore identifier (e.g. tangle, 404-media)
publication_name	Display name
explore_profile_url	Ghost Explore profile page URL
newsletter_url	External newsletter URL
description	Publication description
primary_category	Topic category (Tech, News, Business, Finance, etc.)
members_band	Display member count (e.g. "779K subscribers")
member_count	Numeric member count
avatar_url	Publication logo/icon URL
social_links	Staff social links (newline-separated: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)
ranking_list	Source page (top-members, top-revenue, trending, tech, etc.)
rank	Position on that ranking page
is_top_100	Whether the publication is in Ghost Explore's top 100
show_members_publicly	Whether the publication displays its member count
ap_handle	ActivityPub / social web handle
testimonial_snippet	Owner quote with revenue and subscriber signals (up to 300 chars)
scraped_at	ISO timestamp

Coverage

• Ranking pages: Top Members (by subscriber count), Top Revenue, Trending, Recent
• Topic categories: Tech, News, Business, Finance, Culture, Travel, Science, Programming, Health, Art, Education, Entertainment, and 20+ more
• Publications per page: ~52 curated, verified Ghost-hosted newsletters per page

Why Ghost Explore

Ghost Explore is Ghost's first-party, curated directory — not a third-party aggregator. It uniquely exposes:

• Revenue-tier rankings (Top Revenue page) unavailable on Substack or cross-platform tools
• Member count rankings for independent publishers like 404 Media, Platformer, The Lever, Tangle
• Verified outbound newsletter URLs with ?ref=ghost-explore attribution
• Owner testimonials with real subscriber and revenue figures

This is distinct from webdatalabs/ghost-newsletter-scraper, which scrapes content from a single known publication — not the discovery/directory layer.

Input

{
  "categories": ["top-members", "tech", "news"],
  "maxItems": 500
}

Parameter	Type	Description
categories	Array of strings	Optional. Filter to specific pages. Leave empty to crawl all pages. Examples: top-members, top-revenue, trending, recent, tech, news, business, finance, culture
maxItems	Integer	Maximum number of records to return. Default: 10.

Available category / ranking slugs

top-members, top-revenue, trending, recent, social-web, personal, tech, business, programming, news, culture, travel, finance, education, art, entertainment, faith-spirituality, health, literature, sport, productivity, design, food-drink, crypto, science, music, nature-outdoors, fiction, gaming, house-home, fashion-beauty, podcasts, history, climate, gear-gadgets, parenting, youtubers

Sample output

{
  "publication_slug": "tangle",
  "publication_name": "Tangle",
  "explore_profile_url": "https://explore.ghost.org/p/tangle",
  "newsletter_url": "https://www.readtangle.com",
  "description": "Summarizing the best arguments from across the political spectrum. 100% independent, subscriber-supported, and non-partisan.",
  "primary_category": "News",
  "members_band": "779K subscribers",
  "member_count": 778604,
  "avatar_url": "https://fls-9e7c60dc...",
  "social_links": "https://twitter.com/Ike_Saul\nhttp://www.readtangle.com",
  "ranking_list": "top-members",
  "rank": 1,
  "is_top_100": true,
  "show_members_publicly": true,
  "ap_handle": "@tangle_news@www.readtangle.com",
  "testimonial_snippet": "It has now been one year since I quit my full-time job to go all in on Tangle. Today, we have [75,000] paying subscribers...",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-28T18:00:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Lead generation: Build a list of professional Ghost newsletter operators ranked by audience size for partnership, advertising, or acquisition outreach
• Market research: Map the Ghost ecosystem by category and revenue tier
• Creator economy research: Track top independent publishers outside the Substack/beehiiv ecosystem
• Content intelligence: Identify high-growth newsletters in specific niches via the Trending page