The demand for content on the web is stratospheric. You don’t have to produce your own content, but you do need to supply content that’s reliable.
To offer relevant, up-to-date content, you need a reliable, up-to-the-minute source of news data gathered from a wide range of popular sources from around the world, including CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, and more.
That’s where the mediastack API comes in! The mediastack API makes it easy to bring your website or app access to the latest news data.
There is a reason why mediastack is the trusted news data API resource of more than 2,000 major companies worldwide.
- It collects news data from 7,500+ globally renowned news sources.
- It consistently offers thousands of relevant news and blog articles per day.
- It powers live news feeds, data analytics platforms, and trend analysis applications around the globe.
That’s not all—the API is also used by tens of thousands of individuals, universities, and non-profit organizations requiring a reliable source of live news data.
Whether you run a non-profit organization, a small business resources website, a community news aggregator website, or simply want to run an RSS feed on your blog, the mediastack API gives you the same sources of news data that all the big players use on a daily basis.
What Is the mediastack API?
mediastack is a powerful, easy-to-use REST API interface that retrieves articles from news sources and blogs worldwide. It delivers results within milliseconds in lightweight, easy-to-use JSON format.
It is powered by a rock-solid, scalable, and highly available technical infrastructure capable of dealing with millions of API requests per minute.
Every minute, the mediastack API interface is automatically collecting news from 7,500+ global news sources and blogs worldwide, parsing it, and sending it out to API clients.
How Can You Use the mediastack API?
The mediastack API makes it easy to add news features to your website:
- live news feeds
- trending issues in your industry
- historical news information and timelines
- and much more!
Features: Why Use the mediastack API?
The mediastack API is incredibly rich in features, allowing users to get fast results once they have it set up. Let’s have a quick look at some of the features:
1. Cloud-Based and Fast
The mediastack API is cloud-based and lightweight and delivers lightning fast results to all your API requests in milliseconds.
2. JSON-Format Results
It returns structured and readable news data in easy-to-use JSON format.
3. Customized Feeds
You can customize your feed to offer visitors only the information they want to see.
4. Secure
All data is securely delivered through 256-bit SSL encryption.
5. Scalable
It is highly scalable and can handle millions of API requests per minute, thanks to the rock-solid apilayer cloud infrastructure it is built on.
6. Thousands of News Sources
It boasts 7,500+ sources, including international news publishers and blogs from 50+ countries.
7. Real-Time Updates
News data is updated on a minute-by-minute basis.
8. Round-the-Clock Monitoring
In order to ensure a high level of accuracy and data consistency, all of the sources are monitored round the clock for technical or content anomalies.
9. Current and Historical News
You get access to real-time news data as it’s happening, historical news data from past news articles, and the latest news headlines.
10. Multilingual
At the time of writing, the mediastack API supports 13 languages.
11. Easy Integration
Integrates smoothly with programming languages like PHP, Node.js, Go, Python, and others. The API is very beginner-friendly. You just need API access keys to get started.
12. Well Documented
It also comes with highly accessible documentation that shows you how to do API requests and more.
How It Works
The mediastack API is built upon a RESTful and easy-to-understand request and response structure.
- The API comes with a single HTTP GET endpoint, with a series of parameters and options you can use to narrow down your news data results.
- You can filter by dates and timeframes, countries, language, sources, and search keywords.
- API responses are provided in lightweight JSON format.
Successful mediastack API requests return the following fields: author, title, description, URL, source, image, category, language, country, and publishing date.
Quick Tutorial
Here is an example of the information returned from a successful mediastack API query.
It’s very easy to get set up and start using mediastack. This short tutorial will show you how.
To get started, first sign up for a free account at mediastack. Once you’ve registered, you’ll be taken to the mediastack API quick start screen. From here, you can get your API key and try some example API queries.
Now you can perform a simple API request for live news data, historical news data, and news sources. Using your API key, let’s perform a request.
The quick start guide shows the following format for the query.
Click the example to try the request, or enter it into your address bar:
http://api.mediastack.com/v1/news?access_key=YOUR ACCESS KEY
Be sure to copy your access key into this URL to try it. If your API request was successful, the mediastack API will return pagination information as well as a data object, which contains a separate sub-object for each requested date/time and symbol.
Note that requests you make on the free plan are not encrypted, so you must use the HTTP protocol for free requests. If you try to use HTTPS, you will get the message that “Your current subscription plan does not support HTTPS encryption“. If HTTPS is important to you, then you’ll need to go with a paid plan.
The final step is integrating the mediastack API into your application. For a specific integration guide, you can learn more from the official mediastack documentation, including code examples for JavaScript, PHP, Python, and more.
Should you require assistance of any kind, please contact the mediastack support team.
Pricing
mediastack has several news data subscription plans. Your subscription plan requirement will depend on how many monthly requests you would like to process through the mediastack API.
Free
If you make fewer than 500 news requests per month, then this is the plan for you. It gives access to all sources of news in any of the 13 languages. However, you will receive delayed news data, and your data is not HTTPS encrypted. No credit card is required.
The free plan is a great way to get started, but it is very limited compared to the full API. The free plan cannot be used to create a commercial product.
Standard
This tier gets you 10,000 requests per month. At the time of writing, this plan is $24.99 per month. If billed yearly, you save 20%. It also gives you access to great features like real-time news updates, access to historical data, HTTPS encryption, and technical support.
Professional (Most Popular)
With this plan, you enjoy the full set of features that come with Standard, in addition to supporting up to 50,000 news requests per month. This plan currently costs $99.99 per month and, if billed annually, costs an equivalent of $79.99 per month.
Business
This plan gives you all the tools in Professional, including up to 250,000 news requests per month. It costs $249.00 per month, or $199.99 per month if billed annually.
Enterprise
If you need a higher volume of requests, then you can reach out directly to mediastack for a custom plan. You will get custom pricing that’s tailored to your needs.
Conclusion
The mediastack API is a trusted news data supplier for more than 2,000 major companies worldwide. The API is also used by tens of thousands of individuals, universities, and non-profit organizations requiring a reliable source of live news data. The interface is easy to use and comes with detailed documentation that explains how to use the request and response parameters and more.
