NewString UnraveledResearch powered by data we scrape from the web.Read the latest issue →
String
Book demoSign up
← Answers

NewsAPI alternatives that return full article text

String team · Published November 10, 2026 · Updated November 10, 2026

What are the alternatives to NewsAPI that return the full article text?

NewsAPI truncates each article's content to 200 characters on every plan. For full text, use a news API that includes the body: NewsAPI.ai includes it in every package, GNews on its paid plans, and Webz.io in its news feeds. Or keep a headline source and fetch each article URL yourself: Diffbot's Article API extracts the text, and String's fetch API returns the article as Markdown and gets through the bot protection many news sites run.

A news API suits broad topic monitoring. Search plus fetch suits a fixed list of publishers you need in full.

NewsAPI alternatives at a glance

Prices are each vendor's published list prices, checked on November 10, 2026.

Option Full article text Published price Free start
NewsAPI.org No: content truncated to 200 characters Business $449 a month for 250,000 requests 100 requests a day, development only
NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Yes, "Full content" and "Body" in every package 5K plan $90 a month 2,000 searches
GNews Yes on paid plans; cut to 250 characters on Free From €49.99 a month 100 requests a day, non-commercial
Webz.io Yes, "Full-text content" in its news feeds $0.01 per call plus $0.005 per result $5 of credit a month
Diffbot Article API Yes, from any article URL you send $299 a month for 250,000 credits, 1 credit per page 10,000 credits a month
String Yes, any article URL as Markdown, plus full-text integrations for some publishers $0.25 to $2.40 per 1,000 fetches on Starter 20,000 standard fetches
NewsData.io Listed only under custom data access From $199.99 a month 200 credits a day
mediastack Not on any listed plan From $24.99 a month 100 calls a month

Why NewsAPI does not return the full text

NewsAPI's docs describe the content field as "truncated to 200 chars" (Everything endpoint). Its pricing FAQ says it cannot provide the full content with search results, on any plan (pricing, November 10, 2026).

NewsAPI's own suggestion is to scrape the content yourself from each article's URL (NewsAPI guide). Research datasets built on it note the same cut: one dataset of 334,925 articles records that "content" is truncated to 200 characters (Mendeley Data).

The plans, as of November 10, 2026:

  • Developer is free, with 100 requests a day, a 24-hour delay and a month of history. It is for development and testing only, not staging or production.
  • Business is $449 a month for 250,000 requests, real-time, with up to 5 years of history.
  • Advanced is $1,749 a month for 2,000,000 requests, with a 99.95% uptime SLA.

News APIs that include the full text

These APIs return the body with each article. Prices were checked on each vendor's page on November 10, 2026.

  • NewsAPI.ai, from Event Registry, lists "Full content" and "Body" under what every package includes. The 5K plan is $90 a month, and a free account gets 2,000 searches with no card (plans).
  • GNews returns the full text in content on its paid plans: Essential at €49.99 a month for 1,000 requests a day, Business at €99.99 for 5,000 and Enterprise at €249.99 for 25,000. On the Free plan, content is cut to 250 characters (pricing).
  • Webz.io prices by use: its news feeds cost $0.01 per call plus $0.005 per result on the Scale plan, and include "Full-text content and summaries". Free accounts get $5 of credit a month (pricing).

Two popular APIs do not list full text on their standard plans. NewsData.io names "full article content" only under custom enterprise access (pricing). mediastack's plans run from $24.99 to $249.99 a month, and its sample response has a description but no content field (mediastack).

Search plus fetch: full text from any publisher

The second route splits the job in two. A headline source finds the article URLs, and a fetch API returns each article in full.

  • To find the URLs, NewsAPI itself still works, as do Google News, publisher sitemaps and section pages. String's Google News integration searches by query with date, country and language filters and returns each publisher's own URL.
  • To fetch each article, Diffbot's Article API returns the article's full text as a text field, at 1 credit per page: $299 a month buys 250,000 credits (pricing). String's /v1/fetch returns the page as Markdown with format: markdown.
  • For the record itself, most news articles carry schema.org NewsArticle data with the headline, authors, publish time and section.

This route returns what each publisher shows a logged-out visitor. It does not log in, so a paywalled article comes back as its preview.

The hard part is getting the pages. In the October 30, 2026 run of String's Web Data Frontier Benchmark, 17 scraping APIs loaded 9 news and finance sites five times each, and a request counted only when the real article came back.

  • The median API returned 88.9% of requests on the 9 news and finance sites.
  • String returned 95.6%, 43 of 45.
  • On reuters.com, 8 of the 17 APIs returned all five attempts, and 6 returned none.

Eight providers ran below their current anti-bot setting: Scrapfly, Firecrawl, ScraperAPI, Zyte, ScrapingAnt, ScrapingBee, Scrapingdog and Nimble. The targets and the test code are open on GitHub.

How String returns full article text

String is a web data API for developers and AI agents that fetches, searches and maps any public site without getting blocked. For news it covers both halves of search plus fetch.

  • Any article URL comes back as Markdown. A POST to /v1/fetch with format: markdown returns the article's text without navigation or ads (Markdown for LLMs).
  • Fields as JSON on request. Pass a JSON Schema and get the headline, authors, publish time and body back as fields (structured extraction).
  • Some publishers have full-text integrations. The Bloomberg, Axios, Chosun Ilbo and Caixin Global integrations return articles with their full text as typed rows.
  • Google News search finds the URLs. The Google News integration returns up to about 100 articles per search, with a date filter.
  • A blocked request costs nothing. String does not bill requests that come back blocked (pricing).

Here is a Reuters page as Markdown:

curl https://request.usestring.ai/v1/fetch \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $STRING_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.reuters.com/business/", "format": "markdown"}'

Swap in any article URL from your headline source. The first 20,000 standard fetches are free and need no card.

Can I store or republish full article text?

Article text is copyrighted by its publisher, whichever API delivers it. NewsAPI's own terms bar using its service "to reproduce or republish copyrighted material" (terms), and Perigon's FAQ says a license does not grant the right to republish third-party works (Perigon).

Storing text for internal search, analysis or a RAG index is a different question from republishing it, and publishers' own terms often restrict both. Keep the source URL with every article, link to it, and ask your counsel before you show article text to others. Our page on whether web scraping is legal covers the general rules. This is not legal advice.

Where String fits

  • For: teams that need the full text from a known list of publishers, often for an LLM or RAG pipeline, and want one API that also fetches every other site.
  • Not for: broad topic monitoring across tens of thousands of sources with no URL list, which a news API indexes for you.
  • Price: as of October 2026, Starter is $19 a month and Growth $99, each with that amount of usage included. A standard fetch is $0.25 per 1,000 on Starter and $0.16 on Growth, and a fetch on the premium proxy, used only when a page needs it, is $2.40 and $0.90 (pricing). Blocked requests are not billed.
  • Integrations: a REST API, an MCP server for Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT, n8n and Zapier, and String Actors in the Apify Store.
  • Limits: 15 requests a second on Starter and 30 on Growth, and up to 10,000 concurrent fetches (pricing).

For the full workflow, from finding new URLs to deduplicating articles, see news scraping. For web search APIs, see web search API vs scraping API. Fetch one article your NewsAPI feed truncates, with a free key.

FAQ

What are the alternatives to NewsAPI that return the full article text?

NewsAPI.ai includes the full body in every package. GNews returns full text on its paid plans, and Webz.io includes it in its news feeds. Or pair a headline source with a fetch API: Diffbot's Article API and String's fetch API return the full text of any article URL you send.

Why does NewsAPI only return 200 characters of content?

NewsAPI's docs say the content field is "truncated to 200 chars", and its pricing FAQ says it cannot provide full content with search results on any plan. NewsAPI suggests fetching each article's URL yourself for the full text.

Does the paid NewsAPI plan include full article text?

No. As of November 10, 2026, NewsAPI's Business plan ($449 a month) and Advanced plan ($1,749 a month) add requests, real-time articles and history, but its pricing FAQ says it cannot provide the full content on any plan (NewsAPI pricing, checked November 10, 2026).

Is there a free news API with full article text?

Free tiers usually cut the text. GNews cuts content to 250 characters on its Free plan. NewsAPI.ai gives 2,000 free searches that include the body. String's free credit covers 20,000 standard fetches, and each fetch returns the article text a logged-out reader sees.

How do I get the full text of a news article from its URL?

Fetch the URL and read the article's text and its schema.org NewsArticle data. Many news sites block plain HTTP clients, so use a fetch API that handles proxies and browsers. With String, add format: markdown to get the text without navigation.

Can I get full text from paywalled news sites?

Not by fetching. A fetch returns what the publisher shows a logged-out visitor, so a paywalled article comes back as its preview. Many publishers mark this in the page with isAccessibleForFree: false. For full access, license the content from the publisher.

Can I use full news articles in an LLM or RAG pipeline?

Yes, technically: fetch each article as Markdown, chunk it, and store the headline, publish time and URL with each chunk so answers can cite the source. Whether you may store and use the text depends on the publisher's terms and copyright law, so ask your counsel.

Is NewsAPI.ai the same as NewsAPI.org?

No. NewsAPI.ai is Event Registry's news API, and it includes the full body in every package. NewsAPI.org is a separate service whose content field is truncated to 200 characters.

Sources

Get your API key →Explore the Web Access API