no key · no human

Complex API, RSS and sitemap

Every article Complex publishes, as JSON, through an open API with no key and no signup. 2,233 of their articles are indexed right now, refreshed hourly.

United StatesEnglish#1,575 by volume

Four ways to pull complex.com

All four are ours, all four are live, and none of them needs a key.

JSON Search this publisher

Every article we hold from complex.com, newest first. Add q= to search inside.

curl -s "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?host=www.complex.com&size=20"open it →

RSS Subscribe in any reader

The same articles as an RSS 2.0 feed. Works in Feedly, Inoreader, Thunderbird — anywhere.

curl -s "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/rss?host=www.complex.com&size=50"open it →

JSON Feed For apps

JSON Feed 1.1, the same content in a format apps parse natively.

curl -s "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/feed.json?host=www.complex.com&size=50"open it →

Trimmed For agents

Only the fields an agent needs — title, url, date, language — so the response stays small.

curl -s "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?host=www.complex.com&size=20&fields=title,url,published_at,lang"open it →

Call the API

A live request. Paste it into a terminal and Complex headlines come back as JSON.

bash
curl "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?host=www.complex.com&size=5"
2,233
articles indexed
1,654
in the last 30 days
54
median per day
1
languages
1136 min
median crawl lag
22.07 → 07.09
archive depth

Publishing volume

Articles per day over the last 40 days. The busiest hour is 00:00 UTC — that is when the newsroom pushes its main batch.

2026-07-22: 1 articles2026-07-24: 38 articles2026-07-31: 95 articles2026-08-01: 12 articles2026-08-02: 27 articles2026-08-03: 141 articles2026-08-04: 63 articles2026-08-05: 69 articles2026-08-06: 64 articles2026-08-07: 48 articles2026-08-08: 18 articles2026-08-09: gap in the upstream archive, the whole corpus dips2026-08-10: 47 articles2026-08-11: 66 articles2026-08-12: 63 articles2026-08-13: 62 articles2026-08-14: 54 articles2026-08-15: 36 articles2026-08-16: 30 articles2026-08-17: 88 articles2026-08-18: 62 articles2026-08-19: 54 articles2026-08-20: 70 articles2026-08-21: 189 articles2026-08-22: 29 articles2026-08-23: 31 articles2026-08-24: 46 articles2026-08-25: 62 articles2026-08-26: 64 articles2026-08-27: 70 articles2026-08-28: 60 articles2026-08-29: 100 articles2026-08-30: 35 articles2026-08-31: 95 articles2026-09-02: 53 articles2026-09-03: 61 articles2026-09-04: 52 articles2026-09-05: 30 articles2026-09-06: 26 articles2026-09-07: 1 articles07-2208-0408-1008-1608-2208-2809-0409-07

The 1 hatched days are gaps in the upstream news archive, not quiet days at Complex: the whole corpus dips on those dates. They are excluded from the median above.

bash
curl "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/stats?host=www.complex.com&top=10"

Publishing rhythm

When Complex actually publishes, by hour of day (UTC) and by day of week — measured from 2,233 timestamps, not from a schedule they advertise.

00: 4500001: 470102: 490203: 470304: 180405: 130506: 40607: 00708: 00809: 20910: 81011: 61112: 341213: 391314: 2291415: 2061516: 1701617: 1471718: 1711819: 1601920: 1482021: 1152122: 992223: 7123
Mon: 418MonTue: 253TueWed: 304WedThu: 327ThuFri: 536FriSat: 225SatSun: 170Sun

Languages

CodeLanguageArticlesShare
enEnglish2,233100.0%

Latest articles

The 18 most recent Complex articles in the index — the same rows the API returns, rendered for humans.

Harvest it all

Page through the archive by date. from and to accept YYYY-MM-DD or relative values such as now-7d.

bash
curl "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?host=www.complex.com&from=now-7d&size=100"

To poll for new material, keep the timestamp of the newest article you saw and ask only for what came after it:

bash
curl "https://freenewsapi.ai/v1/search?host=www.complex.com&from=now-1h&sort=date_asc"

Article bodies come with full_text=true. No key, no quota tier, no header — see the search endpoint for every parameter.

Metadata quality

How well Complex marks up its own pages — useful if you are deciding whether to parse them yourself.

64%
dates from JSON-LD
64%
articles with a byline
0%
articles with sections
364 KB
average page weight

Crawl lag — the delay between publication and the article reaching this index — is 1136 min at the median, 2832 minutes at the 90th percentile.

Similar publishers

Comparable outlets in the same language. Those without a page here yet link straight to their slice of the API.

FAQ

Does Complex have an official API?

Not a public one. This endpoint is the practical alternative: their articles as structured JSON, with title, lead, publication time, section, byline and a link back to the original.

How do I get their RSS feed?

Most publishers expose one at /rss or /feed, but feeds carry only the last few dozen items and drop them within hours. This index keeps 2,233 of their articles and lets you filter by date, language and section.

How many articles does Complex publish per day?

54 on a median day, measured across 40 days.

Can I use this commercially?

The API is free and unauthenticated. What you may do with the content is between you and the publisher: we return metadata, a lead paragraph and a link, not a licence.