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October 8, 2026 · GNews Team

Top 5 News APIs in 2026: Free Tiers, Pricing and Coverage Compared

Top 5 News APIs in 2026: Free Tiers, Pricing and Coverage Compared

The five news APIs worth evaluating in 2026 are GNews, NewsData.io, NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry), Mediastack and NewsAPI.org. Every one has a free tier, but most free tiers are for development only and serve delayed articles, so the real choice comes down to coverage, archive depth and the price of the first paid plan.

Disclosure: this article is published by GNews, which is one of the five. Every figure below comes from each provider's official pricing or docs page, checked on 7 October 2026 and linked in the sources.

News APIs compared at a glance

GNews NewsData.io NewsAPI.ai Mediastack NewsAPI.org
Free quota 100 req/day, 10 articles/req 200 credits/day, 10 articles/credit 2,000 searches 100 calls/month 100 req/day
Free-tier delay 12 h 12 h current data (last 30 days) delayed 24 h
Free commercial use No check terms check terms No No
First paid plan €49.99/mo $199.99/mo $90/mo $24.99/mo $449/mo
Billed yearly €39.99/mo (€479.99/yr, -20%) not listed monthly only $22.99/mo (-8%) -20% (about $359/mo)
Cost per request (first paid plan) ~€0.0017 (30,000/mo) ~$0.01 per credit token-based ~$0.0025 ~$0.0018
Archive (paid) from 2020 6 months (Basic), up to 10 years (Corporate) since 2014 yes (depth not stated) 5 years
Languages 41 89 50+ 13 14 (filter codes)
Countries 71 206 not stated 50+ 54 (filter codes)
Sources 80,000+ 100,000+ 150,000+ 7,500+ 150,000+
Source policy verified, quality news sources not stated publisher ranking by audience "news publishers and blogs" "news sources and blogs"

Figures from each provider's pricing and docs pages, checked 7 October 2026. Plans change; confirm on the provider's site before you commit. GNews prices are in euros, the others in US dollars, as each provider lists them. Cost per request is the monthly price divided by the monthly quota (GNews: 1,000 requests a day over 30 days); a NewsData.io credit returns up to 50 articles, and NewsAPI.ai bills in tokens, so it is not directly comparable. The NewsAPI.org yearly figure applies the 20% discount stated on its pricing page; the page does not list the discounted price itself.

How we ranked these news APIs

We weighted six criteria, in this order: (1) what a developer can actually do on the free tier, (2) the price of the first plan that allows commercial, real-time use, (3) source quality and data consistency, (4) coverage in languages, countries and sources, (5) archive depth, and (6) how simple the API is to call. GNews comes first because it is the most balanced: according to GNews, its sources are verified, quality news publishers, and its Essential plan costs about €0.0017 per request, in the same range as NewsAPI.org Business ($0.0018) for a fraction of the monthly price (€49.99 vs $449), with up to 25 articles per request, 41 languages and a two-endpoint API you can call in a few lines. It does not win every row: NewsData.io has wider country coverage, NewsAPI.ai has a deeper archive, and Mediastack has a cheaper entry price for low volumes. If one of those rows matters more to you than the rest, the ranking below should not decide for you.

What to check in a free news API. Five numbers tell you whether a free news API tier is enough for your project. Quota: how many requests you get and over what period. "100 per day" and "100 per month" look alike in a table and are thirty times apart in practice. Delay: most free tiers serve articles 12 to 24 hours after publication, which is fine for building and testing, and not fine for a live news feed. Commercial-use clause: several pricing pages say the free plan is for development and testing only, so a free key cannot power a product you sell, even a small one. Articles per request: a request that returns 10 articles and one that returns 50 consume the same quota, so this number changes how far the quota stretches. Archive window: free tiers usually cover the last month at most; historical news data starts with a paid plan. Check all five before you write integration code.

Source quality and data consistency

Source count is only half the picture: what kind of sites are in the index matters too. Some indexes include blogs alongside newsrooms. That widens coverage, but it means you may want to filter by source yourself before results reach your users.

Mediastack describes its data as coming from "news publishers and blogs", and NewsAPI.org from "news sources and blogs across the web". NewsAPI.ai ranks publishers by monthly audience, lets you sort by source importance, and states 99.99% uptime. GNews states that its sources are verified, quality news publishers, and its site describes "continuous quality checks" that keep the data "clean and consistent".

Consistency matters as much as selection. In the two GNews requests behind this article, all 20 returned articles had title, description, content, url, image, publishedAt, lang and source name and URL filled, from 15 distinct publishers including Reuters, NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, The Independent and The Economic Times. source.country came back on the 10 search results but not on the 10 top-headlines results, so treat it as optional.

The 5 best news APIs

1. GNews: real-time production plan at a low cost per request

Best for: production apps that need real-time news at volume without enterprise pricing.

GNews exposes two endpoints, /api/v4/search and /api/v4/top-headlines, over "over 80,000 worldwide sources" in 41 languages and 71 countries (docs). Top headlines come in nine categories: general, world, nation, business, technology, entertainment, sports, science and health.

  • Source quality: GNews states that its sources are verified, quality news publishers, which reduces the source filtering you need to do.
  • Free tier: €0, 100 requests per day, up to 10 articles per request, 30 days of history, 12-hour delay, CORS for localhost only. It is "for development and testing purposes", so no commercial use.
  • First paid plan: Essential at €49.99/month (€39.99/month billed yearly): 1,000 requests per day, up to 25 articles per request, real-time articles, commercial use, history from 2020 and full content. Business (€99.99) and Enterprise (€249.99) raise the quotas.
  • Consider: the archive starts in 2020, which covers most product use cases but not long-range historical research.

2. NewsData.io: widest country and language coverage

Best for: global, multilingual projects that need the most countries and languages.

NewsData.io states "100,000+ news sources in 206 countries and 89 languages", the widest country and language coverage of the five (NewsData blog).

  • Free tier: 200 API credits per day, 10 articles per credit, articles delayed by 12 hours, no card required. That is the most generous free daily quota in this list.
  • First paid plan: Basic at $199.99/month: 20,000 credits per month, 50 articles per credit, 6 months of history. The Corporate plan ($1,299.99/month) extends the archive to up to 10 years.
  • Consider: the pricing figures come from NewsData's own pricing blog post, updated 24 September 2026, because the pricing page renders client-side. Check the commercial-use terms of the free plan directly with NewsData.

Best for: research, media monitoring and analysis projects that need historical news data.

NewsAPI.ai indexes 150,000+ news outlets in 50+ languages and offers historical data since 2014, the deepest archive of the five (plans).

  • Free tier: 2,000 searches, no credit card, covering current data (the last 30 days).
  • First paid plan: the 5K Plan at $90/month. Historical searches cost more tokens: 5 tokens per year searched.
  • Consider: the pricing model counts searches and tokens rather than requests per day, so estimate your query volume (and how many years back each query reaches) before you compare it with the others.

4. Mediastack: lowest paid entry price

Best for: production apps on a tight budget that need commercial rights and live data.

Mediastack covers 7,500+ sources in 50+ countries and 13 languages (pricing).

  • Free tier: $0, 100 calls per month (not per day), delayed news data, no historical data, no commercial use.
  • First paid plan: Standard at $24.99/month ($22.99 billed yearly): 10,000 calls per month, live data, historical data and commercial use. It is the cheapest commercial, real-time plan in this comparison.
  • Consider: the free quota is monthly, so it suits a quick evaluation more than a long build phase. Check its source and language list against your target markets.

5. NewsAPI.org: best-known, simple to prototype

Best for: quick prototypes and tutorials, since it is often the first news API developers search for.

NewsAPI.org's /sources endpoint accepts 14 language codes and 54 country codes (docs).

  • Free tier (Developer): $0, 100 requests per day, articles up to a month old with a 24-hour delay, CORS for localhost. It is for "development and testing in a development environment only".
  • First paid plan: Business at $449/month (20% off billed yearly): 250,000 requests per month, real-time articles, search up to 5 years back, commercial use.
  • Consider: there is no plan between the free tier and $449/month, so budget for that step if a prototype turns into a product.

Which news API should you choose?

Choosing a news API by use case. Match the API to the job, not to the longest feature list. Side project or learning: any of the five free tiers works, as long as a 12 to 24 hour delay is acceptable. NewsData.io gives the most free daily credits; GNews and NewsAPI.org give 100 requests per day; Mediastack's 100 calls per month is enough for a short evaluation. Production app on a budget: Mediastack Standard ($24.99/month, 10,000 calls per month) is the cheapest entry for low volumes; above roughly 330 calls a day, GNews Essential (€49.99/month, 1,000 requests per day, up to 25 articles each) is cheaper per request and adds 41 languages. Research that needs an archive: NewsAPI.ai has data since 2014; NewsData.io's Corporate plan reaches up to 10 years. Global, multilingual coverage: NewsData.io lists 206 countries and 89 languages. Whatever you pick, run your real query on the free tier first and check that the sources you care about come back.

Not on the list

  • NewsCatcher: access goes through a sales demo, so there is no self-serve free tier to compare.
  • The Guardian Open Platform: a single publisher, not an aggregator.
  • Currents API: left out for space.

Try a news API in 2 minutes: GNews example

Create a free account at gnews.io, copy your API key from the dashboard and export it as GNEWS_API_KEY. The request below searches for the exact phrase "Federal Reserve" in English article titles and descriptions, newest first, 10 results. It runs on the free plan. All parameters are described in the search endpoint docs.

Python

import json, os, urllib.parse, urllib.request

params = {
    "q": '"Federal Reserve"',
    "lang": "en",
    "max": 10,
    "in": "title,description",
    "sortby": "publishedAt",
    "apikey": os.environ["GNEWS_API_KEY"],
}
url = "https://gnews.io/api/v4/search?" + urllib.parse.urlencode(params)

with urllib.request.urlopen(url, timeout=30) as response:
    data = json.loads(response.read().decode("utf-8"))

print(data["totalArticles"])
for article in data["articles"]:
    print(article["publishedAt"], article["source"]["name"], article["title"])

JavaScript

// Node.js 18+ (built-in fetch). Run as an ES module, e.g. search.mjs
const params = new URLSearchParams({
  q: '"Federal Reserve"',
  lang: "en",
  max: "10",
  in: "title,description",
  sortby: "publishedAt",
  apikey: process.env.GNEWS_API_KEY,
});

const response = await fetch(`https://gnews.io/api/v4/search?${params}`);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`GNews error ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();

console.log(data.totalArticles);
for (const article of data.articles) {
  console.log(article.publishedAt, article.source.name, article.title);
}

cURL

curl -G "https://gnews.io/api/v4/search" \
  --data-urlencode 'q="Federal Reserve"' \
  -d lang=en \
  -d max=10 \
  -d in=title,description \
  -d sortby=publishedAt \
  -d "apikey=$GNEWS_API_KEY"

What each parameter does:

  • q (required, up to 200 characters): the query. Quotes make it an exact phrase.
  • lang: article language, here English.
  • max: number of articles returned; 10 is the free-plan maximum.
  • in: which fields to match, here title and description.
  • sortby: publishedAt for newest first, or relevance.

You can also bound the search in time with from and to (ISO 8601 dates, for example 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z) and filter by country. On the free plan, history covers the last 30 days.

Top headlines

For a ready-made feed instead of a keyword search, call top-headlines with a category:

curl -G "https://gnews.io/api/v4/top-headlines" \
  -d category=business \
  -d lang=en \
  -d country=us \
  -d max=10 \
  -d "apikey=$GNEWS_API_KEY"

category takes one of the nine values listed above; lang, country and max work as in search.

Example response

This is the real response to the search request above, run on 7 October 2026, trimmed to two of the ten articles (the content strings are shortened and invisible formatting characters removed for display):

{
  "totalArticles": 54453,
  "articles": [
    {
      "id": "dfb7e7a1255cd4e94463ba5c19dd2230",
      "title": "Gold edges lower with focus on Fed minutes, rate path clues",
      "description": "Gold prices slipped on Wednesday as investors looked to minutes from the US Federal Reserve's September meeting for indications on whether policymakers remain inclined to raise rates further.",
      "content": "Oct 7 (Reuters) - Gold prices slipped on Wednesday as investors looked to minutes from the US Federal Reserve's September meeting for indications on whether policymakers remain inclined to raise...",
      "url": "https://www.reuters.com/world/india/gold-edges-lower-with-focus-fed-minutes-rate-path-clues-2026-10-07/",
      "image": "https://www.reuters.com/resizer/v2/LYLIQMUNFNMWDGEKY6JPCZ6ATA.jpg?auth=8f2144d6aa8c0be4c1bf5a75192a07196bb7e504035010a2b91a4e2400cba4f6&height=1005&width=1920&quality=80&smart=true",
      "publishedAt": "2026-10-07T02:18:32Z",
      "lang": "en",
      "source": {
        "id": "da5c26287bdd02563a2c32b55cb12051",
        "name": "Reuters",
        "url": "https://www.reuters.com",
        "country": "us"
      }
    },
    {
      "id": "a8efdaad09207dd7a4227d49a9fcbf86",
      "title": "Gold flat as focus turns to Fed minutes",
      "description": "Gold prices remained steady as market participants look forward to insights from the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting minutes. Spot gold hovered at $4,159.62 per ounce, while December futures were valued at $4,187.30. Amid ongoing inflation and recent sluggish economic indicators, Fed discussions around interest rate hikes are influencing investor sentiment, with many opting for yield-generating assets over gold.",
      "content": "Synopsis\nGold prices remained steady as market participants look forward to insights from the Federal Reserve's upcoming meeting minutes. Spot gold hovered at $4,159.62 per ounce, while December...",
      "url": "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/news/gold-flat-as-focus-turns-to-fed-minutes/articleshow/134753704.cms",
      "image": "https://img.etimg.com/thumb/msid-134753728,width-1200,height-900,imgsize-202484,overlay-etmarkets/articleshow.jpg",
      "publishedAt": "2026-10-07T01:58:00Z",
      "lang": "en",
      "source": {
        "id": "5464668c1f0466950a0b2fab5249ec6c",
        "name": "The Economic Times",
        "url": "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com",
        "country": "in"
      }
    }
  ]
}

totalArticles is the number of matching articles in the index; articles holds at most max of them. source.country tells you where the outlet is based, which is handy for regional filtering; it was not returned by top-headlines in our test, so treat it as optional.

FAQ

Is there a free news API?

Yes. All five news APIs in this comparison have a free tier: GNews (100 requests per day), NewsData.io (200 credits per day), NewsAPI.ai (2,000 searches), Mediastack (100 calls per month) and NewsAPI.org (100 requests per day). Most free tiers are meant for development and serve delayed articles (12 hours on GNews and NewsData.io, 24 hours on NewsAPI.org), so treat them as a way to build and test, not as a production feed.

Can I use a free news API in a commercial product?

Not with the GNews, Mediastack or NewsAPI.org free tiers: each pricing page restricts the free plan to development and testing, or excludes commercial use. NewsData.io and NewsAPI.ai do not state it clearly on the pages we checked, so read their terms before you ship. Commercial use starts with the first paid plan on all three providers that state it.

Which news API has the most historical data?

NewsAPI.ai, with historical data since 2014 according to its plans page. NewsData.io's Corporate plan reaches up to 10 years, NewsAPI.org's Business plan searches up to 5 years back, and GNews paid plans go back to 2020.

What is the cheapest news API for production use?

Among the five news APIs compared here, the cheapest plan that includes both commercial use and live (real-time) data is Mediastack Standard at $24.99 per month, or $22.99 per month billed yearly. It includes 10,000 calls per month, live data and historical data, across 7,500+ sources in 13 languages. The next step up in price is GNews Essential at €49.99 per month (€39.99 billed yearly), which includes 1,000 requests per day with up to 25 articles per request, real-time articles, commercial use, full content and history from 2020, across 41 languages and 71 countries. The right choice depends on volume: 10,000 calls per month is about 330 calls a day, while 1,000 requests per day is about 30,000 a month, which puts GNews at about €0.0017 per request against $0.0025 for Mediastack. NewsAPI.ai starts at $90 per month, NewsData.io at $199.99 and NewsAPI.org at $449. Prices checked 7 October 2026 on each provider's pricing page.

What's the difference between NewsAPI.org and GNews?

Both free tiers are for development only, with 100 requests per day. The free-tier delay is 24 hours on NewsAPI.org and 12 hours on GNews. The first paid plan is $449/month on NewsAPI.org (250,000 requests per month, 5 years of search) and €49.99/month on GNews (1,000 requests per day, history from 2020).

Sources

All pages checked on 7 October 2026.

Start building for free: create a GNews account, get your API key and run the search example above in under two minutes.