diff --git a/.drone.yml b/.drone.yml
index 81776dc..57321dc 100644
--- a/.drone.yml
+++ b/.drone.yml
@@ -29,6 +29,16 @@ steps:
     commands:
       - yarn build:dev
 
+  - name: run instance crawl
+    image: node:14-alpine
+    commands:
+      # libpq and openssl can probably be removed after lemmy dep is upgraded to 0.16.4+
+      - apk add cargo pkgconfig openssl openssl-dev libpq libpq-dev
+      - yarn crawl
+    when:
+      event:
+        - cron
+
   - name: make release build and push to docker hub
     image: plugins/docker
     settings:
diff --git a/.gitmodules b/.gitmodules
index 4d5221e..aeb7abe 100644
--- a/.gitmodules
+++ b/.gitmodules
@@ -14,3 +14,6 @@
 	path = lemmy-js-client
 	url = https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-js-client
 	branch = main
+[submodule "lemmy-stats-crawler"]
+	path = lemmy-stats-crawler
+	url = https://yerbamate.ml/LemmyNet/lemmy-stats-crawler.git
diff --git a/crawl.mjs b/crawl.mjs
index 3d5a46a..b3e2680 100644
--- a/crawl.mjs
+++ b/crawl.mjs
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ try {
   const run = spawn("cargo",
       ["run", "--", "--start-instances", all_recommended,
           "--exclude-instances", recommended_instances.exclude], {
-        cwd: "../lemmy-stats-crawler",
+        cwd: "lemmy-stats-crawler",
         encoding : 'utf8'
       });
   let savedOutput = '';
diff --git a/lemmy-stats-crawler b/lemmy-stats-crawler
new file mode 160000
index 0000000..d11febc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lemmy-stats-crawler
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Subproject commit d11febc7e80ae7ea37bd57f00163d71e4b48a918