News APIs
News articles and media
This directory lists 16 news APIs. 1 of them require no API key and support CORS, so you can call them directly from browser JavaScript with no backend and no sign-up. Every entry shows whether it needs authentication, serves over HTTPS and allows cross-origin requests, so you can pick one that fits your stack before you read a single doc page.
Best News APIs for Developers
A news API allows developers to fetch breaking headlines, search article archives, and aggregate content from thousands of publishers programmatically. These APIs power news aggregators, media monitoring tools, and content-driven applications.
For headline search, NewsAPI and GNews are the easiest starting points: both hand out a free key with no credit card, though GNews caps the free plan at 100 requests a day and NewsAPI's free tier blocks commercial use. The Guardian stands out for depth, with full article text back to 1999 behind a free non commercial key capped at 5,000 calls a day. Spaceflight News needs no key at all and fits hobby projects tracking launches. Chronicling America suits historical research, giving free access to millions of digitized US newspaper pages.
The recurring pitfall here is licensing: most free news tiers are for development or personal use only, forbid republishing full articles at scale, and throttle hard once traffic grows, so budget for a paid plan before shipping anything public.
What to check before you pick one
- Source coverage: APIs that aggregate thousands of sources provide broader topic coverage than those limited to a few publishers.
- Filtering capabilities: Keyword, category, language, and country filters are essential for building targeted news feeds.
- Archive depth: For media monitoring and research, APIs with multi-year article archives are more valuable than real-time-only services.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are news APIs?
News APIs provide programmatic access to news articles, breaking headlines, media content, and journalism data from thousands of publishers and news sources around the world.
Is NewsAPI free?
NewsAPI offers a free Developer plan that provides access to headlines and article search with a 1,000 request per day limit. Commercial and production use requires a paid plan.
How do I filter news by topic or source using an API?
Most news APIs accept query parameters for keywords, source domains, language, country, and category. For example, you can request only technology articles in English from specific publishers.