Free APIs catalog (journalism-curated)
A short list of free APIs that work for journalism, research, and weekend projects under current free-tier conditions. The value here is curation under verified 2026 free-tier limits, not coverage. For breadth, defer to the canonical aggregator below.
Canonical breadth reference
For a near-complete inventory of free public APIs across every category (1000+ entries, actively maintained), use:
Not archived, last commit verified 2026-05-09, 4,600+ commits, 6,000+ merged PRs. When you need an API outside the categories below, search there first.
This skill curates the journalism-relevant subset.
Recently sunset / changed (don't use)
| API | Status | What to use instead |
|---|
| IEX Cloud | Fully retired 2024-08-31. https://iexcloud.org/ | Alpha Vantage, Tiingo IEX, Financial Modeling Prep, Polygon |
| CrowdTangle | Sunset 2024-08-14 | Meta Content Library (academic/non-profit-research only, most journalists ineligible). https://transparency.meta.com/researchtools/meta-content-library/ |
| ProPublica Congress API | Retired 2024-07-10, repo archived. https://www.propublica.org/nerds/congress-api-update | api.congress.gov (Library of Congress, free with api.data.gov key) |
| X / Twitter API free tier | Effectively eliminated for new developers as of Feb 2026; pay-per-use only. Uncertain on exact figures (provider pricing page returned 402). Treat as paid. | No free replacement; closest free alternatives are Bluesky Jetstream + Mastodon |
| Reddit API | Free for research/non-commercial only since June 2023; paid for commercial use. https://www.reddit.com/wiki/api/ | (Same, usable for journalism research, prohibited for monetized products) |
| Hugging Face Inference API | Rebranded to Inference Providers (router across 20+ providers). Free users now get $0.10/month in credits, down from previous unmetered free tier for many models. https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers/pricing | Free tier still works for low-volume / embeddings; paid for production |
Journalism-curated short list
All entries below verified against provider pages on 2026-05-09 unless marked uncertain. Always confirm rate limits against the provider's live developer docs before depending on them in production.
News monitoring
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| GDELT 2.0 | Fully free, no auth | Global news + knowledge graph, updates every 15 min, BigQuery-mirrored. Strong for cross-border / longitudinal monitoring. |
| NewsAPI | 100 req/day, 24h delay, 1mo window, dev-only | Commercial use prohibited on free tier. Not usable in shipped products. |
| GNews | 100 req/day, 30d window, 12h delay, non-commercial | 10 articles/request cap. |
| Mediastack | 100 req/month, 30-min delay | Functionally a demo. |
| NYT Article Search / Top Stories | Free with key, daily cap (uncertain, verify) | Solid for archival queries. |
Social platforms (post-API-monetization landscape)
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| Bluesky Jetstream | Public WebSocket firehose, no auth | Real-time public-post stream. 4 official instances. Caveat: not formally part of AT Protocol, no long-term stability commitment. |
| Bluesky AppView | Public read endpoints, 3000 req / 5min IP-based | Auth needed for write ops. Profiles, posts, search. |
| Mastodon | Per-instance, OAuth, public endpoints often unauth-readable | Federated, coverage is server-by-server. |
| Threads (Meta) | Free pricing not surfaced on docs page (uncertain, verify) | Read/post/reply/search/insights/webhooks. |
| Reddit | 100 QPM authenticated, 10 QPM unauthenticated, non-commercial only | Adequate for OSINT/research, prohibited for monetized products. |
| Meta Content Library | Academic / non-profit researchers only | Most journalists need a university partner to qualify. |
| TikTok Research API | Academic-affiliated researchers only | Same eligibility gate as MCL. |
Government / public records (US)
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| api.data.gov umbrella key | One key for 25+ federal agencies, 450+ APIs | Gateway for NASA, NPS, NIH, USGS, FDA, EPA, LoC, etc. Use this first. |
| api.congress.gov | Free with api.data.gov key | Official Library of Congress legislative data. Replaces ProPublica Congress API. |
| GovInfo (GPO) | Uses api.data.gov key | Federal-publication search and full-text. New MCP server in public preview for LLM workflows. |
| OpenFEC | Free, api.data.gov key | Campaign finance. (Page ECONNREFUSED on verification day, confirm rate limits live.) |
| Census API | Free, no documented rate limits | Demographic / economic data. |
| BLS | 500 queries/day, 25 series/query with key (uncertain, page 403'd; verify) | Labor statistics. |
| BEA | Free with key | National income & product accounts. |
| EPA Envirofacts | Free, no auth | TRI, Superfund, ECHO, RCRAInfo, SDWIS, GHG, RadNet, FRS, ~20 EPA programs. |
| USGS earthquakes | Free, no auth | Real-time + historical earthquake events. GeoJSON / QuakeML / CSV. |
Weather / climate
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| NWS api.weather.gov | Fully free, no key, just User-Agent header | "Generous" rate limit. Forecasts, alerts, observations, gridpoints. US only. |
| Open-Meteo | Free non-commercial: 600/min, 10k/day, 300k/month, no key | CC BY 4.0 attribution required. Global. Commercial use requires paid. |
| OpenWeather | 60 calls/min, 1M calls/mo on free tier | Historical weather, 30-day forecasts, Bulk Download, Weather History API are paid. Students get historical via student program. |
Financial / economic
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| FRED (St. Louis Fed) | Free with key (uncertain, page 403'd; verify limits) | Primary reference for US macro data. |
| CoinGecko Demo | 10k calls/mo, 30/min, free with key | Attribution required. |
| Alpha Vantage | 25 requests/day | Free tier is now a demo, not a usable journalism data source. Migration target for IEX Cloud users, but expect to need a paid tier for any real workload. |
| Financial Modeling Prep | Free tier exists, paid for production | IEX Cloud successor. |
Archive / preservation
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| Wayback Machine | Free | Availability JSON, Memento, CDX server. Save Page Now exposes programmatic submit. |
| archive.today | Programmatic submit available; no public API docs (uncertain, WebFetch blocked) | Useful for redundancy alongside Wayback. Verify endpoint by direct curl. |
AI / ML
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| Hugging Face Inference Providers | $0.10/month free credit, then pay-as-you-go | 2024 rebrand from "Inference API." Plain HF Inference now mostly CPU-only (embeddings, BERT-class). PRO users get $2/month. |
| Cohere | Free trial key for development, rate-limited | Paid for production. |
Sports
| API | Free tier | Notes |
|---|
| TheSportsDB | Free at point of access | $9/mo premium for production key. |
| football-data.org | Free tier covers 12 major competitions | UCL, Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, etc. |
Evaluating APIs from the catalog
When picking an API for a journalism project, check three things on the provider's developer docs:
| Field | What to check |
|---|
| Auth | "No auth" = no registration. "Key required" = sign up + manage the key. OAuth = per-user flow. |
| Free-tier limits | Daily / monthly request caps, rate limits per minute, article delay (often 12–24h on free tiers), recency window. |
| Commercial restriction | Many "free" APIs prohibit commercial use. Even an internal newsroom tool that supports paid coverage may count. Read the ToS. |
| CORS | Matters for browser frontends, irrelevant for backend scripts and cron jobs. |
| Stability commitment | Some "free firehose" APIs (e.g., Bluesky Jetstream) have no long-term stability commitment. Don't depend on them in production without a fallback. |
Weekend project ideas
- News alerts: GDELT or NewsAPI + keyword filter + Telegram bot (2–3 hours)
- Sentiment signal: News feed + Hugging Face sentiment model + score from −1 to +1 (note free-tier credit cap)
- Weather dashboard: Open-Meteo + historical data + forecast for target city
- Earthquake monitor: USGS FDSN feed + threshold filter + Slack notification
- Federal dataset explorer: api.data.gov key + cycle through agencies + index findings to a project digital archive
Usage tip
For any new project needing external data: check the journalism-curated list above first. If nothing fits, search public-apis/public-apis. Feed candidate API docs to an agent along with your specific use case, it'll spot rate-limit / commercial-use traps that a casual read would miss.
Last currency sweep
2026-05-09. Verified directly against provider pages where reachable; uncertain entries marked inline with the specific provider page that failed verification (403, ECONNREFUSED, login-walled). Re-verify rate-limit numbers before depending on them in production.
Curation under current free-tier conditions is what paid alternatives like RapidAPI's directory don't provide. Coverage is what public-apis/public-apis is for.
