The Top 40 Substack Newsletters by Organic Traffic
Who's who of the who
Substack is an online newsletter company focused on bringing a new format to independent writers. While it only started in 2017, as of November 2021 it already reached 1 million paying subscribers!
According to SimilarWeb, they’re now getting almost 30 million unique visitors a month, too.
Now imagine how many more people read newsletters exclusively in their email browsers and you can bet their total reach is in the hundreds of millions every month.
While they likely have almost 20 thousand different newsletters set up, Substack doesn’t release much information publicly.
Backlinko makes a good attempt at collecting as much data as they can on Substack and occasionally update their main article, so if you’re curious for more stats, check that out.
One thing they didn’t quite answer well enough is:
What are the most popular Substack newsletters?
So, I set out to answer the question using a few online SEO tools. Here are the top Substack newsletters as of January 2022, ranked by their estimated organic traffic.
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The Top Substack Newsletters by Traffic
1. Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson
Topic: History and U.S. politics
Author: Heather Cox Richardson is an American history professor at Boston College.
Description: “This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 80,000 per month on Semrush (1.05 million on SimilarWeb)
2. TK News by Matt Taibbi
Topic: Investigative Journalism
Author: Matt Taibbi is an American journalist, author, and podcaster long-term writer for Rolling Stone.
Description: “[I] report on complex topics like finance, congressional procedure and military contracting in clear, accessible language. I will also continue the Rolling Stone tradition of presidential campaign reporting (I’ve covered five presidential campaigns), and will also work on various creative projects, including true crime reporting, serialized books, and video explainers.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 68,000 per month on Semrush (1.42 million on SimilarWeb)
#3. Common Sense by Bari Weiss
Topic: Investigative Journalism
Author: Bari Weiss is a journalist and author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
Description: “There are tens of millions of Americans who aren’t on the hard left or the hard right who feel that the world has gone mad. Science is at the mercy of politics. Identity trumps ideas. In the name of progress, art is erased and history is rewritten. Obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. This newsletter is for those people.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 28,500 per month on Semrush (721,000 on SimilarWeb)
#4. Noahpinion by Noah Smith
Topic: Economics and Culture
Author: Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist and was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University.
Description: “There are tens of millions of Americans who aren’t on the hard left or the hard right who feel that the world has gone mad. Science is at the mercy of politics. Identity trumps ideas. In the name of progress, art is erased and history is rewritten. Obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. This newsletter is for those people.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 26,000 per month on Semrush (565,000 on SimilarWeb )
#5. Outside Voices by Glenn Greenwald
Topic: Investigative Journalism
Author: Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist focusing on governmental injustices around the world.
Description: “Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, “No Place to Hide,” is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 21,000 per month on Semrush (390,000 on SimilarWeb)
#6. Solano NewsNet by a network of volunteers
Topic: News and information regarding Solano County
Author: A network of volunteers news assumably living in Solano County.
Description: “Independent breaking news for Solano County.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 12,000 per month on Semrush (No data on SimilarWeb)
#7. Huddle Up by Joseph Pompliano
Topic: Sports and Business
Author: Joseph Pompliano is a writer and worked at a sports agency and JP Morgan.
Description: “A free daily newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. Read daily by industry executives, professional athletes, investors, and fans, Huddle Up has become a go-to resource for more than 30,000 people. I’m biased, but I truly believe it’s content and perspective you can’t find anywhere else.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 11,000 per month on Semrush (390,000 on SimilarWeb)
#8. ParentData by Emily Oster
Topic: Pregnancy, Parenting, and COVID-19
Author: Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and bestselling author of several books on parenting.
Description: “It’s a twice-weekly newsletter that parses the latest data about pregnancy, parenting, and, yes, COVID-19. It’s data and decision tools, spreadsheets, statistics, and phrases I claim to invent like “Safety Turducken” and “Situational Fluency.” If this is your jam, you’re in the right place.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 11,000 per month on Semrush (240,000 on SimilarWeb)
#9. Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander
Topic: Reasoning and Science
Author: Scott Alexander is a doctor in the US working on new models for mental health care at Lorien Psychiatry.
Description: “Astral Codex Ten is a blog about ṛta. Ṛta is a Sanskrit word, so ancient that it brushes up against the origin of Indo-European languages. It’s related to English “rationality” and “arithmetic”, but also “art” and “harmony”. And “right”, both in the senses of “natural rights” and “the right answer”. And “order”. And “arete” and “aristos” and all those other Greek words about morality. And “artificial”, as in eg artificial intelligence. More speculatively “reign” and related words about rulership, and “rich” and related words about money.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 10,000 per month on Semrush (1,900,000 on SimilarWeb)
#10. The Popehat Report by Ken White
Topic: Law
Author: Ken White is an attorney in California, where he’s a partner in a small firm practicing criminal defense and civil litigation.
Description: “I mostly write about criminal justice and free speech issues. I enjoy writing “lawsplainers” — attempts to make somewhat esoteric legal issues clear and entertaining to non-lawyers (and to reasonably tolerant lawyers). I also like to talk about the gulf between what the law is supposed to do and what it actually does. I’ve written a lot about federal criminal law, the criminal investigations surrounding the Trump Administration, First Amendment disputes and adjacent cultural disputes, and the intersection of free speech law and the internet.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: 11,000 per month on Semrush (No data on SimilarWeb)
This is a free version of Pryor Thoughts, because they all are.
But just in case you want to help keep this newsletter running:
#11 to #40 Top Substack Newsletters by Organic Traffic
11. Unreported Truths by Alex Berenson — Words?
12. Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen — Culture
13. The Audacity by Roxane Gay — Writing and Writers
14. The Weekly Dish by Andrew Sullivan and Chris Bodenner — Discourse and Culture
15. House of Strauss by Ethan Sherwood Strauss — Sports and Opinion
16. Your Local Epidemiologist by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina — Medical Science and COVID
17. FdB by Freddie deBoer — Discourse and Media
18. BIG by Matt Stoller — Business and Monopoly Power
19. Shan’t We Tell the Vicar by Mara Wilson — Movies and Commentary
20. The Profile by Polina Pompliano — Profiles on People and Companies
21. The Glinner Update by Graham Linehan — Feminism and Comedy
22. The Bitcoin Forecast by Willy Woo — Cryptocurrency
23. Singal-Minded by Jesse Singal — Science and Social Justice
24. It Bears Mentioning by John McWhorter — Language and Race
25. Her Hoop Stats by Various Authors — Women’s Basketball
26. JoeBlogs by Joe Posnanski and Larry Burke — Sports
27. Original Jurisdiction by David Lat — Law
28. Gray Mirror by Curtis Yarvin — Society Commentary and Book Writing
29. PREVAIL by Greg Olear — Politics and History
30. The Stein Line by Marc Stein — Sports
31. next big thing by Nikhil Basu Trivedi — Venture Capitalism and Predictions
32. Futbol by Grant Wahl — Football (Soccer)
33. Vittles. by Various— Food and Culture
34. Gregory‘s Newsletter by Gregory Mannarino — Stocks?
35. Ari by Ari Melber — Journalism and Music
36. Emily’s Life Plan for the Week by Emily Mariko — Personal Diary and Daily Plan
37. Read Max by Max Read — Technology and Internet Culture
38. Steady by Dan Rather and Others — News and Commentary
39. The Daily Coach by Various — Self Development
40. MT by Michael Tracey — Media Commentary
#∞. Pryor Thoughts by J.J. Pryor
Topic: A hub for non-boring stories, deep dives, mysterious history lessons, and laughs, all rolled into one.
Author: JJ Pryor (me), an expat Canadian who’s had a wild ride of a career and has been living around Asia for over a decade.
Description: “Welcome to Pryor Thoughts, the place where J.J. Pryor shares all the weird and interesting things he encounters living abroad life in life abroad.”
Estimated Organic Traffic: Around 15,000 a month
How I Made This List
I used Semrush and SimilarWeb to come up with this top list of Substack newsletters. This ranks performance by worldwide traffic on desktop (excluding mobile), so the actual results would likely be much higher.
It’s also a capture of information at one point in time from a tool that uses estimates, so take this with a grain of salt as an approximation.
Different tools also often have different estimates. Sometimes the variation is huge, but they typically are consistent across time.
If you liked this, I do similar deep dives into online platforms from time to time. Catch more here.
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Header: Image created by Author, modified from photo by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels
Starting my writings now. Thanks for posting this!
Thanks for taking the time to make this list.