free-apis-catalog

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:

• public-apis/public-apis on GitHub — https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis

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.