Free news APIs, and what "free" actually buys you
Almost every news API advertises a free tier. Almost none of them mean what a developer hears. Here is the field as measured in August 2026.
The three meanings of "free"
- Free trial. Credits that run out. Mediastack's 100 requests a month and World News API's trial credits are this.
- Free for non-commercial use. Real recurring quota, but you may not ship it. NewsAPI.org and GNews are this — the moment your side project has users, you owe them money.
- Free but registered. Genuine free usage, still gated behind a signup form and an API key. FreeNewsAPI.io's 5,000 a day and APITube's 1,000 a day are this, and they are the most generous offers in the category.
There is a fourth kind, and as far as we can measure there is exactly one of it: free with no registration at all. That is what this site is.
Every free tier, measured
| Service | Free tier | API key | Commercial on free | Article text | MCP | llms.txt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| freenewsapi.ai | unlimited | none | allowed | free | roadmap | yes |
| APITube | 1,000 requests/day | required | allowed | included | yes | yes |
| NewsAPI.org | 100 requests/day | required | forbidden on free | paid tiers only | no | no |
| GNews | 100 requests/day | required | forbidden on free | paid tiers only | yes | yes |
| NewsData.io | limited trial | required | paid only | paid tiers only | no | yes |
| The News API | limited daily | required | allowed | paid tiers only | no | no |
| World News API | trial credits | required | paid | included on paid | yes | no |
| Mediastack | 100 requests/month | required | paid only | paid tiers only | no | no |
| Currents API | 250 requests/day | required | allowed | partial | no | yes |
| FreeNewsAPI.io | 5,000 requests/day | required | allowed | included | no | no |
| NewsCatcher | 6,000 requests/month | required | allowed | included | no | yes |
| Perigon | none published | required | enterprise | included | yes | yes |
The keyless test
The distinction matters most when the caller is a program rather than a person. We called every API in the table with no key:
| Service | Response to a keyless request |
|---|---|
| newsapi.org | 401 apiKeyMissing |
| gnews.io | 400 You did not provide an API key |
| newsdata.io | 401 The API Key is missing |
| thenewsapi.com | 401 invalid_api_token |
| mediastack.com | 401 missing_access_key |
| apitube.io | 401 ER0201 |
| worldnewsapi.com | 401 You are not authorized |
| currentsapi.services | 401 Authentication required |
| goperigon.com | 401 API key not found |
| freenewsapi.io | 401 Missing API key |
| freenewsapi.ai | 200 results |
Which to pick
Learning or prototyping
Any of them. Take APITube's 1,000 a day — it is the most complete product with a usable free tier.
Shipping a commercial product
Check the licence, not the quota. NewsAPI.org and GNews forbid commercial use on free regardless of volume.
Building an autonomous agent
The key is the problem, not the quota. An agent cannot complete a signup form. That is the gap we exist to fill.
Needing years of archive
Pay. NewsData.io or Perigon. No free tier in the market covers deep history, ours included — we hold 30 days.
Start with no key
curl "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?q=artificial+intelligence&date=today&size=5"