Substack shows only today's follower count on a writer's profile and keeps no public history. Stackblade reads the count for 6,391 Substack writers and stores every reading, so each writer page has a dated chart of followers since Oct 31, 2026. Look the writer up at stackblade.app/explore. 9,023 daily readings are on record as of Nov 6, 2026.
Where the numbers come from
Each writer's public Substack profile shows a follower count. I read it every 3 days for every tracked writer, and every day for writers on a Pro watchlist. The last reading of a UTC day is the one kept. Followers are people following the writer on Substack; they are not the same as email subscribers, and Substack rounds the subscriber figure it shows ("169K+").
Who is tracked
Every writer who appears on any of the 33 category leaderboards gets added, and so does anyone a visitor looks up. Once in, a writer stays. The median tracked writer has 6,573 followers; 479 have 100,000 or more, and the largest is Heather Cox Richardson with 3,531,361.
What you get on a writer page
The follower chart, 7-day and 30-day change (shown once 7 or 30 days of readings exist), the paid band and bestseller badge, every leaderboard position on every read, and who recommends the publication. The free JSON endpoint /api/v1/writer/{handle} returns the current numbers; the full daily history as CSV is part of Pro.
Limits
History starts on Oct 31, 2026. Nobody can fill in earlier counts, because Substack does not publish them. A writer who was never on a leaderboard has history only from the day someone first looked them up. Follower counts can be inflated like any count, so a jump with no new rank or recommendation is worth a second look.
Numbers updated Nov 6, 2026. Other answers: How do Bestseller and Rising rankings work?, How many paid subscribers does a newsletter have?.