Free news API: what you actually get (and the catch)
"Free" news APIs range from genuinely useful to a teaser that returns nothing you can build on. Here's an honest breakdown of what free tiers usually include, what they gate, and exactly what NewsAgent Data's free tier gives you.
What "free" usually means
Most free news tiers limit you on three axes at once: request volume (often per month, not per day), history window (only the last day or two), and depth (raw headlines, no enrichment). The common catch is the third one — you get text, then you still have to build scoring, classification and de-duplication yourself.
What our free tier includes
- 100 requests / day — per day, not per month, and a single call returns up to 100 articles.
- The full enriched schema — urgency score (0–10), 9-category political lean, topic / audience / country tags, and event
cluster_id. You evaluate the real data, not a stripped-down sample. - 1-day history and the live breaking feed.
- No credit card — the key is emailed instantly and works on the first call.
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \ "https://api.newsagentdata.com/v1/feed?min_score=6&days=1"
The honest catch
Free omits two things: source names & links and full article text. You still get every analytical field — so you can prototype scoring, filtering and clustering end to end — but attribution and full bodies start on the paid tiers. That keeps the free tier genuinely useful without giving away the source catalog.
When to upgrade
Move up when you need higher volume, a longer history window, source attribution or full text. The Developer tier is $29/mo (5,000 req/day, source names & links); see pricing for the full ladder. Nothing changes in your code — the same schema, just higher limits.