Is There a Google News API? RSS and 7 News APIs Tested
Quick answer: No. Google offers no News API; its old News Search API was retired long ago. Google News RSS still works: both feeds we called on 5 November 2026 returned 200 with XML and no key. For JSON, Hacker News Search, Spaceflight News and GDELT answered anonymously, while NewsAPI, GNews, the Guardian and TheNewsAPI refused without a key.
We run Public APIs, a categorized directory of public APIs that notes how each one authenticates and whether it allows browser calls. Searches such as "google news api free" reached our news APIs category about 210 times in the 28 days to 5 November 2026, and nobody clicked, because a list of news APIs never says whether Google has one. So we called Google's two RSS endpoints and seven news APIs once each, without credentials, and recorded the status and headers.
Does Google have a News API?
Not one you can sign up for. Google retired its News Search API years ago and has shipped no replacement, so there is no key to request and no JSON endpoint that returns Google News results. The question has the same answer as the one for jobs: our post on the Google Jobs API found that Google publishes job listings for employers to feed, not for developers to read.
What Google does leave open is a pair of RSS feeds. They are unversioned, keyless and undocumented as an API, which makes them useful for a prototype and fragile for a product.
Does Google News RSS still work?
Yes, with limits you should know before you build on it. Both feeds answered our anonymous request on 5 November 2026:
| Feed | URL | Status | Bytes | Content type | CORS header | Cache-Control |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top stories | news.google.com/rss?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en | 200 | 119,149 | application/xml; charset=utf-8 | not sent | no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate |
| Search | news.google.com/rss/search?q=api&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en | 200 | 123,742 | application/xml; charset=utf-8 | not sent | no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate |
The search feed takes your query in q. The other three parameters pick the edition: hl is the interface language, gl the country and ceid the country and language pair, so hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en is the US English edition.
Three findings matter in practice:
- It is XML, not JSON. You need an RSS parser, and each request returned about 120 KB.
- A browser cannot call it. Neither feed sent
Access-Control-Allow-Origin, so a front-endfetchfrom your own domain is blocked. Fetch it from a server or a scheduled job. - Google tells caches not to keep it.
no-storeforbids any shared or browser cache from storing the response. If you poll the feed, keep your own copy and refresh on a timer instead of on every page view; our guide to API caching headers explains what each directive allows.
The feeds carry no key, so there is no account, no quota page and no contract behind them. Read Google's terms of service before you put the feed behind a commercial product.
What do the unofficial Google News libraries do, and are they maintained?
Two open-source wrappers are what most tutorials reach for. Both wrap Google News feeds in a Python interface, so they inherit every limit above. We read their GitHub repositories on 5 November 2026:
| Repository | Stars | Last commit | Latest GitHub release | Open issues | Archived | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | kotartemiy/pygooglenews | 1,395 | 9 December 2024 | none | 26 | no | | ranahaani/GNews | 1,018 | 24 October 2026 | 0.2.3 (13 October 2021) | 0 | no |
pygooglenews has had no commit in almost two years, publishes no GitHub release and carries 26 open issues. Treat it as reference code. GNews (the Python library, unrelated to the gnews.io API below) is active on its default branch, with a commit on 24 October 2026 and no open issues, but its newest GitHub release dates from 2021. If you use it, pin a commit rather than trusting the release tag.
Neither library changes what sits underneath. When Google changes the feed, both break at the same time.
Which news APIs can you call today?
Of the seven news APIs we called on 5 November 2026, three returned 200 with JSON and no key, and four refused. Keyless APIs come first:
| API | Key needed | Status | Bytes | Browser-callable (Access-Control-Allow-Origin) | Cache-Control |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News Search (Algolia) | no | 200 | 29,239 | yes (*) | not sent |
| GDELT DOC 2.0 | no | 200 | 374 | yes (*) | public, max-age=900 |
| Spaceflight News | no | 200 | 1,065 | no (not sent) | max-age=600 |
| NewsAPI | yes | 401 | 158 | no (not sent) | no-cache |
| GNews | yes | 400 | 159 | yes (*) | not sent |
| The Guardian Open Platform | yes | 401 | 46 | no (not sent) | not sent |
| TheNewsAPI | yes | 401 | 85 | yes (*) | no-cache, private |
Hacker News Search and GDELT are the only two a static page can call directly with no key and no server. Hacker News Search returns stories from one community, Hacker News; GDELT returns news articles and lets caches keep its answer for 900 seconds. Spaceflight News is keyless but sent no CORS header, so call it from a server.
The four keyed APIs need an account first. GNews and TheNewsAPI sent the wildcard CORS header even on the refusal, so they can work from a browser once you have a key, though shipping that key to the browser exposes it. NewsAPI and the Guardian sent no CORS header, so plan on a backend. Free tiers on keyed APIs come with request quotas; our post on API rate limiting covers the 429 and Retry-After handling you will need.
The directory carries more options with their auth and CORS recorded on each listing, among them Free News API, Newsmesh and NewsAPI.ai.
What about scraping Google News results?
Scraping vendors sell parsed Google results as JSON, and some cover news results. That is the only way to get what Google News shows, ranked as Google ranks it. It costs money per search and moves the terms risk to you and the vendor.
For scale, SerpApi listed a free plan of 250 searches a month and a Starter plan at $25 a month for 1,000 searches on its pricing page on 16 October 2026. A news widget that refreshes every few minutes burns through that quickly. Our ranking of SerpApi alternatives compares the vendors on free tier and price. Choose that route only when you need Google's own ranking; for headlines, a news API or the RSS feed costs nothing.
What should you do?
As an API consumer:
- For a prototype that needs Google's selection of headlines, fetch Google News RSS from a server and cache it yourself.
- For JSON in a browser with no key, start with GDELT or Hacker News Search.
- For a product with users, pick a keyed news API, keep the key on your server and budget for its quota.
As an API builder, the probe shows what makes a news API easy to adopt: a JSON error on a missing key (all four keyed APIs returned one under 160 bytes), a CORS header if browser use is intended, and a Cache-Control value that tells clients how long a headline list stays fresh.
How we called them
On 5 November 2026 at 10:08 UTC, from one machine, we sent one curl GET to each of the nine URLs: no key, a desktop Chrome user agent, English Accept-Language, redirects followed and a 30-second timeout. We recorded the final status, the decompressed body size and the Server, Content-Type, Access-Control-Allow-Origin and Cache-Control headers. Repository figures come from the GitHub API on the same day. One call from one place is a snapshot, not an uptime record.
FAQ
Is there a free Google News API?
No. Google offers no News API, free or paid. The closest free option is the Google News RSS feed, which answered without a key on 5 November 2026 but returns XML and cannot be called from a browser.
What is the best Google News API alternative?
It depends on where your code runs. For browser code with no key, GDELT and Hacker News Search both answered anonymously with a wildcard CORS header on 5 November 2026. For a production app, a keyed news API such as NewsAPI, GNews, the Guardian or TheNewsAPI is the usual pick, called from your server.
Can I call Google News RSS from JavaScript in the browser?
Not from your own domain. Neither feed sent an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header on 5 November 2026, so the browser blocks a cross-origin fetch. Fetch the feed from a server or a scheduled job, and since Google sent no-store, keep your own cached copy.
Can I get Google News results as JSON?
Not from Google. You can parse the RSS feed into JSON yourself, use a Python wrapper such as GNews, or pay a scraping vendor that returns Google results as JSON.
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