Best News Search APIs for Developers and Researchers

Tracking news programmatically matters for sentiment analysis, market monitoring, competitive intelligence, and research pipelines. The challenge: most general-purpose search APIs return a noisy mix of blog posts, product pages, and forum threads alongside actual news. You need an API that understands what "news" means — recency, source authority, and topical clustering.

This guide compares the 7 best news search APIs for developers, with verified pricing and working code examples.

Key Takeaways

• General search APIs (SwiftSearch, Tavily, Brave) handle news well with date filters — often cheaper than news-specific services
• NewsAPI.org is the most popular dedicated news API — but the free tier is restricted to development use only
• SearchHive SwiftSearch offers date-filtered search from $9/month — 5K queries with built-in recency sorting
• Exa's semantic search finds news by topic, not just keywords — useful for tracking evolving stories
• GDELT Project provides free news event data — massive scale but complex schema, not a simple search API
• Currents API offers free news search — limited source pool but zero cost for prototyping
• SerpApi's News API parses Google News — best data quality, highest price ($25/month minimum)

1. SearchHive SwiftSearch — Best Value for News Monitoring

SearchHive's SwiftSearch API supports date-range filtering, source filtering, and recency sorting — making it effective for news monitoring despite being a general-purpose search API.

Pricing: Free (500 credits) → Starter $9/month (5K) → Builder $49/month (100K) → Unicorn $199/month (500K)

import requests
from datetime import datetime, timedelta

API_KEY = "your_searchhive_key"
BASE = "https://api.searchhive.dev/v1"

# News monitoring — results sorted by recency
yesterday = (datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1)).strftime("%Y-%m-%d")
resp = requests.get(f"{BASE}/search", params={
    "api_key": API_KEY,
    "query": "artificial intelligence regulation policy",
    "num_results": 20,
    "sort": "date",
    "date_from": yesterday
})

articles = resp.json()["results"]
for article in articles:
    print(f"[{article.get('date', 'N/A')}] {article['title']}")
    print(f"  {article['url']}")
    print(f"  {article['snippet'][:120]}...")
    print()

The advantage: when a news story requires deeper investigation, you can follow up with ScrapeForge on the same API key and credits:

# Deep read of a specific article
scrape = requests.get(f"{BASE}/scrape", params={
    "api_key": API_KEY,
    "url": articles[0]["url"],
    "format": "markdown",
    "extract": "title,author,date,body_text"
})
print(scrape.json()["content"])

2. NewsAPI.org — Most Popular Dedicated News API

NewsAPI.org is the go-to for news-specific search. It indexes 70,000+ sources worldwide and provides both search and top-headlines endpoints.

Pricing: Free (100 requests/day, dev only) → Developer $449/month (100K requests) → Business $949/month (500K requests)

The free tier is explicitly for development — production use requires a paid plan. And $449/month for 100K requests is steep.

import requests

# Search news articles
resp = requests.get("https://newsapi.org/v2/everything", params={
    "apiKey": "your_newsapi_key",
    "q": "machine learning breakthrough",
    "from": "2026-04-01",
    "to": "2026-04-12",
    "sortBy": "publishedAt",
    "pageSize": 20,
    "language": "en"
})

for article in resp.json()["articles"]:
    print(article["publishedAt"][:10] + " | " + article["source"]["name"])
    print("  " + article["title"])
    print("  " + article["url"])
    print()

Clean API, good documentation, reliable results. The pricing makes it viable only for teams with dedicated budgets for news data.

3. Exa — Best for Topical News Discovery

Exa's neural search excels at finding news about specific topics or themes — even when the articles don't contain your exact keywords.

Pricing: Free (1K requests) → Search $7/1K → Deep Search $12/1K → Monitors $15/1K

Exa's Monitors endpoint is particularly useful for news: it runs searches at a specified cadence (daily, weekly) and delivers new results via webhook.

import requests

resp = requests.post("https://api.exa.ai/search", headers={
    "x-api-key": "your_exa_key"
}, json={
    "query": "regulatory changes affecting AI companies in 2026",
    "num_results": 15,
    "type": "neural",
    "startPublishedDate": "2026-04-01T00:00:00Z",
    "contents": {"text": {"maxCharacters": 500}}
})

for r in resp.json()["results"]:
    published = r.get("publishedDate", "unknown")
    print(f"[{published}] {r['title']}")
    print(f"  Score: {r['score']:.2f}")

The semantic matching catches relevant articles that keyword search misses — useful for tracking stories that span multiple terms (e.g., "AI safety regulation" might appear as "algorithmic accountability laws").

4. SerpApi News API — Best Data Quality

SerpApi parses Google News results into structured free JSON formatter. You get the same results you'd see searching Google News directly — including source clusters and related queries.

Pricing: Starts at $25/month (1K searches). News searches consume the same credits as web searches.

from serpapi import GoogleSearch

search = GoogleSearch({
    "api_key": "your_serpapi_key",
    "engine": "google_news",
    "q": "quantum computing breakthrough",
    "num": 10
})

for story in search.get_dict().get("news_results", []):
    print(story["source"] + ": " + story["title"])
    print("  " + story["link"])
    print("  " + story.get("date", "N/A"))

Same pricing issue as SerpApi web search — expensive at scale. 100K news queries/month would cost $725.

5. Brave Search API — Simplest Pricing for News

Brave's search API supports news-specific searches with the same flat $5/1K pricing.

Pricing: Free ($5/month credits) → $5/1K searches

import requests

headers = {
    "Accept": "application/json",
    "X-Subscription-Token": "your_brave_key"
}

resp = requests.get("https://api.search.brave.com/res/v1/web/search",
    params={"q": "renewable energy policy news", "count": 10, "freshness": "pd"},
    headers=headers
)

for r in resp.json().get("web", {}).get("results", []):
    print(r.get("age", "N/A") + " | " + r["title"])
    print("  " + r["url"])

The freshness parameter filters by time period (pd = past day, pw = past week, pm = past month). Simple and effective.

6. GDELT Project — Free at Scale

GDELT monitors news from every country in 100+ languages in near real-time. It's free and massive — but the API is complex and the data requires processing.

Pricing: Free, no API key required

import requests

# Search GDELT for news mentions
resp = requests.get("https://api.gdeltproject.org/api/v2/doc/doc", params={
    "query": '"electric vehicle" OR "EV battery"',
    "mode": "ArtList",
    "maxrecords": 25,
    "format": "json",
    "timespan": "7d"
})

data = resp.json()
for article in data.get("articles", []):
    print(article.get("seendate", "N/A")[:10] + " | " + article.get("domain", "N/A"))
    print("  " + article.get("title", "N/A"))
    print("  " + article.get("url", "N/A"))

GDELT is invaluable for global news monitoring at zero cost. The tradeoff is the learning curve — understanding the event and tone data requires time investment.

7. Currents API — Free News Aggregation

Currents API aggregates news from multiple sources with a generous free tier.

Pricing: Free (200 requests/day) → Premium ($100/month, 10K requests) → Enterprise (custom)

import requests

resp = requests.get("https://api.currentsapi.services/v1/latest-news", params={
    "apiKey": "your_currents_key",
    "language": "en",
    "category": "technology"
})

for article in resp.json().get("news", []):
    print(article["published"] + " | " + article["author"])
    print("  " + article["title"])
    print("  " + article["url"])

Limited source diversity compared to NewsAPI, but the 200 free requests per day covers basic monitoring needs.

Comparison Table

The Verdict

For most developer teams, a general-purpose search API with good date filtering handles news monitoring adequately. SearchHive's SwiftSearch gives you news-capable search at $49/month for 100K queries — compared to NewsAPI.org's $449/month for the same volume. The cost difference funds a lot of follow-up scraping and analysis.

For research teams that need semantic topic tracking, add Exa's Monitors on top. For global scale at zero cost, GDELT is unmatched.

Start building with SearchHive's free tier — 500 credits, no card required.