Is There a Google News API? What Developers Use Instead

No: Google shut down its news search API in 2011, and nothing official has replaced it. Developers pick one of three options instead: the Google News RSS feeds, a SERP scraping API, or GNews API, which returns headlines based on Google News rankings and keyword search across 80,000+ sources, as JSON.

Is there an official Google News API?

Google News is a product, not a developer platform. Its search API closed in 2011, and the only official API that touches news today is the Search Console API, which only reports on websites you own. Every result you find for "Google News API" is a third party.

What developers want from one is clear: the top headlines of a country or a category, keyword search with date filters, and structured JSON with title, source, date, URL, and text. Three families of tools provide that, with different trade-offs. They are compared below.

GNews API is one of them: an independent news API, not affiliated with Google, whose top headlines are based on Google News rankings by category, country, and language, and whose search covers 80,000+ sources with historical data since 2020.

Google News API alternatives compared

Three ways to get Google News-style data into your code. Each one is a reasonable choice: pick by what you need to build.

Google News RSS SERP scraping APIs GNews API
What it is Google's own feeds for an edition, a section, or a search Services that scrape Google News result pages and return them as JSON (SerpApi, Apify, SerpHouse)
Official Google product Yes, but not an API: no API key, no documentation, no support No, built by scraping Google's pages
Data per article Title, link, date, source name Title, link, date, source, thumbnail, position as ranked by Google
Top headlines by country and category Yes, one feed per edition and section Yes, as Google displays them
Keyword search Basic Yes, within what Google displays
Historical data Recent items only Whatever Google's pages show
Stability Format and limits can change without notice Breaks when Google changes its layout, then fixed by the provider
Price Free Pay per result, usually per 1,000 searches
Best for A personal project that needs a few headlines Mirroring exactly what Google News shows on a page

Other news APIs such as NewsAPI.org, NewsAPI.ai, and The News API belong to the same family as GNews API: see how they compare.

Google News API in cURL, Python, JavaScript, PHP, and C#

There is no Google endpoint to call, so here is the request developers send instead. Create a free account, verify your email address, copy the API key from your dashboard, and run one of these. No credit card, no OAuth, no SDK required.

curl --get "https://gnews.io/api/v4/top-headlines" \
  --data-urlencode "category=business" \
  --data-urlencode "lang=en" \
  --data-urlencode "apikey=YOUR_API_KEY"

These requests return the top business headlines of the moment, in English, based on Google News rankings. Change category for another section (general, world, nation, technology, entertainment, sports, science, or health), and add country or change lang for another edition.

Every language gets the same JSON: the number of matching articles and the list of articles, where every article carries the same fields, from title and content to image, date, language, and source. The JSON reference details each field.

Search by keyword

Swap the endpoint for search and pass your query in q. It is matched in article titles and descriptions (add in=title,description,content to search the full text too), with optional language, country, and date filters, and articles come newest first.

curl --get "https://gnews.io/api/v4/search" \
  --data-urlencode "q=AI" \
  --data-urlencode "lang=en" \
  --data-urlencode "apikey=YOUR_API_KEY"

Prefer a library?

Official SDKs wrap both endpoints with typed responses, error handling, and retries: pip install gnews-io-python, npm install @gnews-io/gnews-io-js, or composer require gnews-io/gnews-io-php. For AI agents, pip install langchain-gnews adds top headlines and search as LangChain tools, and the hosted MCP server connects Claude Code, Cursor, or VS Code without any code.

Libraries & SDKs

Is the Google News API free?

Google has no news API to price. The RSS feeds cost nothing but return a few fields with no guarantees, and SERP scraping APIs charge per result. GNews API has a Free plan: 100 requests per day, 10 articles per request, articles from the last 30 days, for development, testing, and non-commercial projects, with no credit card. Paid plans start at €49.99/month with 1,000 requests per day, real-time articles, full article content, and historical data since 2020. Every paid plan starts with a 10-day free trial.

Google News search API: keywords, dates, and languages

The closest thing to a Google News search API is the Search endpoint (/api/v4/search). It queries our index of 80,000+ sources rather than Google's pages, which is what makes date filters and operators possible:

  • q: the query, with AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, and exact phrases in quotes, for example "artificial intelligence" AND (companies OR technology)
  • lang and country: the language of the article and the country of its source
  • from and to: a publication date range, since 2020 on paid plans
  • sortby: publishedAt for the newest first, or relevance
  • max and page: up to 100 articles per request depending on your plan, with pagination

The Query Syntax and the Search endpoint are documented in full, and the API Playground in your dashboard builds the request for you.

What you can build

Add news features to your app or platform.
A few ways developers use it:

Trending headlines

Get ranked, real-time top headlines for news feeds, front pages, and dashboards, as JSON.

Example JSON response from GNews API: totalArticles and an article with its title, URL, publication date, and source

Advanced search

Combine keywords with AND, OR, and NOT, and filter by language, country, and date range, for media monitoring, analytics, and RAG pipelines.

Search requests in cURL and JavaScript, with a quoted phrase, AND, NOT, and a date range

News feed for your website or app

Show a news module on your site or app, by category, language, or country, with article cards that stay up to date.

AI agents and datasets

Give an agent the day's headlines through the LangChain tools or the MCP server, or collect a recent, diverse dataset to train summarization, classification, or NER models.

Topic hubs

Build themed hubs, such as football transfers or film and TV releases, with filtered, frequently refreshed articles.

FAQ

No. Google retired its Google News Search API in 2011 and never released a successor. Developers now use the Google News RSS feeds, SERP scraping APIs that return Google's result pages as JSON, or an independent news API such as GNews API, which returns top headlines based on Google News rankings and keyword search across 80,000+ sources.

No. GNews API is an independent service, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google. Top headlines are based on Google News rankings; the index, the infrastructure, and the support are our own.

Not exactly. The Top Headlines endpoint picks the top headlines of a category, country, and language based on Google News rankings, then returns them with their content from our own index of 80,000+ sources. The Search endpoint queries that index directly, with operators and date filters Google News doesn't offer. To mirror what a Google News page shows, use a SERP scraping API; for structured articles and search, use GNews API.

There is no Google News API, free or paid. The Google News RSS feeds are free but only carry a title, a link, a date, and a source name. GNews API has a Free plan with 100 requests per day and up to 10 articles per request on the last 30 days of news, no credit card needed. Paid plans start at €49.99/month: see the Pricing page.

Scrapers break: layouts change, requests get blocked, and articles need deduplicating and cleaning. GNews API gives you a documented contract instead: one API key, two endpoints, consistent JSON, and article content already extracted.

Usually an afternoon. There are two REST endpoints, authentication is one API key, and the response is flat: totalArticles and an articles array where each article holds its text (title, description, content), its URL and image, its publication date and language, and its source. Most migrations swap the base URL, rename a few query parameters, and remap those fields. The documentation and the official SDKs cover the rest.

Yes. Start on the Free plan to check the data and your integration, then start the 10-day free trial of a paid plan to test real-time articles, full article content, and production volumes. Cancel before the trial ends and you won't be charged.

Sign up, verify your email address, and copy the API key from your dashboard. You start on the Free plan, with no credit card. If you sign up with Google, there is no email to verify.

Two. The Search endpoint (/api/v4/search) finds articles by keyword, with operators, a date range, language and country filters, sorting, and pagination. The Top Headlines endpoint (/api/v4/top-headlines) returns the current top headlines of a category: general, world, nation, business, technology, entertainment, sports, science, or health.

The selection is based on Google News rankings for the category, language, and country you ask for. The articles are then returned newest first.

Looking for something else? See all frequently asked questions.

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