Currents API
Free-tier news API often recommended in roundups, with inconsistent limits
Founded: 2018 | Not publicly disclosed | Team: Not publicly disclosed
Headlines & metadata
What is Currents API?
Currents API has run since about 2018 with latest-news and search endpoints filtered by language, region and category. Developer roundups often point beginners to its free tier, but they quote the limit as 600 requests a day, 600 a month or 250 a day depending on the article, and the free plan returns latest news only, with no historical search or commercial use. One report lists paid plans from $69 a month for 75,000 requests (independently unverifiable). The operator, location and team are not published.
Typical uses: News & content apps, Research & academia. What sets it apart: A free tier that tutorials and roundups often recommend.
What does the Currents API API include?
REST APIJSON
| Capability |
|---|
| Headlines & metadata |
Currents API pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is free tier; monthly plans. Entry price: $69/mo (third-party listing).
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free tier | Permanent free allowance, usually with request, history or commercial-use limits |
| Monthly plans | Self-serve subscription with published quotas |
API prices and quotas change often. Check Currents API's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
Currents API pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +Free key is quick to obtain | -Quoted free limits disagree |
| +Two simple endpoints | -Free plan has no history and bars commercial use |
| +Several languages and regions | -No identifiable operator or support terms |
Currents API vs alternatives
How Currents API compares to the other top News APIs.
| API | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsCatcher | Developers who want clean, deduplicated news without writing... | Summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done | 4.7 | Full comparison |
| NewsData.io | Developers who want a working news call within... | A free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan | 4.6 | Full comparison |
| Perigon | Indie developers and startups wanting enriched data at... | Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) | Developers building multilingual event or research tools. | Event records that join coverage of one story across languages | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| GNews | Small commercial apps needing a cheap, simple news... | Commercial rights and full article content for under €50 a month | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Data engineers backfilling years of news for datasets. | History back to 2008 and the widest claimed source count here | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Exa | RAG and agent developers needing semantic news retrieval. | Search by meaning with page text returned in the same request | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | Agent builders adding a news tool in a... | Built-in LangChain and LlamaIndex integrations that return prompt-ready text | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| World News API | Location-aware apps on a small budget. | Latitude, longitude and radius filters from the $39 plan, plus a URL text extractor | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.org | Learning projects and prototypes that follow existing tutorials. | The largest pile of tutorials, wrappers and answered questions of any news API | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| SerpApi Google News | Developers who need exactly what Google News ranks. | Google News rankings and story groupings as structured JSON | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| GDELT Project | Zero-budget data projects and research prototypes. | No key, no fee and global coverage refreshed every 15 minutes | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Brave Search API | Developers replacing Bing News Search with an independent... | Results from its own crawler, independent of Google and Bing | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Serper Google News | Agent prototypes needing cheap Google News lookups. | About $1 per 1,000 Google queries on the entry pack, by third-party figures | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Marketaux | Fintech developers needing ticker-tagged news cheaply. | Entity-level sentiment on every article, free plan included | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment | Hobby quants wanting news sentiment beside price data. | Ticker and topic sentiment scores from the same key as market data | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News | Trading-app developers already using Polygon or Massive data. | Per-ticker sentiment with a written reason, included in stock data plans | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Mediastack | Low-traffic sites needing a cheap commercial headline feed. | Commercial use and historical news from $24.99 a month | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Guardian Open Platform | Students and researchers needing free full-text articles. | Free full article bodies from a major newspaper, with editorial tags | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Diffbot | Developers collecting news from a fixed list of... | Parser-free extraction from any article URL, linked to a Knowledge Graph | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Finnhub | Personal fintech projects needing news and prices from... | A 60-calls-a-minute free key covering company news and market data | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| DataForSEO Google News | High-volume Google News rank tracking on a budget. | About $0.60 per 1,000 Google News result pages in the Standard queue | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| TheNewsAPI | Personal dashboards needing a cheap general feed. | Possibly the lowest paid entry price here, if third-party pricing is current | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| NYT Developer APIs | Students and historians working with Times metadata. | Searchable headlines and abstracts for every Times issue since 1851 | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Benzinga | Trading platforms needing a licensed market newswire. | Original market headlines with ratings and earnings events in one feed | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Quantexa News API (Aylien) | Teams maintaining an existing Aylien integration. | Aylien's fine-grained entity and category tagging | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| APITube | Developers comparing coverage in a side-by-side trial. | Sentiment and entity filters offered on lower tiers | 3.4 | Full comparison |
Currents API FAQ
What is Currents API?
Free-tier news API often recommended in roundups, with inconsistent limits
How much does Currents API charge?
Pricing model: free tier; monthly plans. The cheapest paid access listed is $69/mo (third-party listing). Free access: yes, with limits.
Which formats and SDKs does Currents API support?
Currents API offers REST API, JSON.
Is Currents API right for enterprise?
Currents API lists no enterprise contract, so check SLA and support terms first. Main caveat: Quoted free limits disagree.
What are the best Currents API alternatives?
The best alternatives to Currents API depend on your use case. Top options are:
- NewsCatcher: summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done
- NewsData.io: a free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan
- Perigon: entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly
Compare Currents API with other News APIs
Currents API vs NewsCatcher Currents API vs NewsData.io Currents API vs Perigon Currents API vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Currents API vs GNews Currents API vs Webz.io Currents API vs Exa Currents API vs Tavily Currents API vs World News API Currents API vs NewsAPI.org Currents API vs SerpApi Google News Currents API vs GDELT Project Currents API vs Brave Search API Currents API vs Serper Google News Currents API vs Marketaux Currents API vs Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment Currents API vs Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News Currents API vs Mediastack Currents API vs Guardian Open Platform Currents API vs Diffbot Currents API vs Finnhub Currents API vs DataForSEO Google News Currents API vs TheNewsAPI Currents API vs NYT Developer APIs Currents API vs Benzinga Currents API vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) Currents API vs APITube
Verify all details directly with Currents API before making a decision.