Each Substack category has two top-100 leaderboards. Bestsellers ranks publications by paid subscribers. Rising ranks them by recent growth in paid subscribers. Across 33 categories that is 66 boards. Between my two latest reads of each board (7 hours apart), 0.2% of Bestsellers entries were new, and 0% on Rising. Figures from Stackblade's reads, updated Nov 6, 2026.
What decides the order
Substack does not publish the formula. What the boards show is consistent with paid subscribers for Bestsellers and recent paid growth for Rising: free followers do not put a writer on either. Category size matters more than audience size. On the latest read, noname was #10 on Education Bestsellers with 550 followers.
How often they change
I have read every board 3 times since Oct 31, 2026, about 2 reads a day. Between the two latest reads of each board: on Bestsellers, 0.2% of the 3,244 entries were new and the median writer who stayed moved 0 places; on Rising, 0% were new and the median move was 0 places. In all, 5,303 different writers hold the 6,442 places right now.
Current #1s
- Culture Bestsellers: Selvaggia Lucarelli, 251k followers
- Technology Bestsellers: Dylan Patel, 379k followers
- Business Bestsellers: Lenny Rachitsky, 1.4M followers
- U.S. Politics Bestsellers: The Free Press, 2.6M followers
- Finance Bestsellers: Citrini, 301k followers
- Food & Drink Bestsellers: Caroline Chambers, 690k followers
- Podcasts Bestsellers: Heather Cox Richardson, 3.5M followers
- Sports Bestsellers: John Canzano, 65k followers
Every board, with each writer's move since the read before: Leaderboards.
Rank history
Substack's boards are a snapshot; yesterday's ranks are gone once they change. Stackblade keeps every position on every read (7,828 daily rank rows), so each writer page has a rank heatmap and each board shows moves. Steps into the top 25, top 10 or #1 are listed in Activity.
Limits
Only the top 100 of each board is visible, so a writer at #101 looks the same as one at #10,000. The bestseller badge (100, 1,000 or 10,000 paid) and paid band are separate from the boards and come from the profile.
Numbers updated Nov 6, 2026. Other answers: How to see a newsletter's follower count history, How many paid subscribers does a newsletter have?.