What is a stock news API?

A stock news API is a service your software calls to get market headlines that are already tagged with tickers, a source, a time, and a type. You do not scrape a website, and you do not ask a model to guess which story is about which company. MarketNewsAPI is that service for US-listed stocks and ETFs.

What you get back

Each article is one of three types. Stock news is publisher reporting. A press release is the company announcement, and the wire text is included. A legal notice is a shareholder class-action or investor-alert notice, returned as a headline, a summary, and a link. Every article can also carry an AI summary of one to three sentences and entity tags.

The response is not a quote, a chart, or a reason the price moved. If you need prices, use a market-data vendor beside this API. If you need the headline that hit the wire, use this one.

Two ways to read it

REST is for search, pages, and backfill. GET /v1/news takes tickers, type, source, a keyword, and a date window. WebSocket is for the live edge. Pro holds the connection open and pushes each matching article. Free is REST only, delayed 15 minutes, at 100 requests a day, over the last year.

Most apps use both. REST fills history and reconnect gaps. The socket covers the next headline. That split is written up in REST vs WebSocket.

Why agents call an API instead of a search box

An assistant with a web search gets a ranking of pages. An assistant with a news tool gets a short list of articles that mention NVDA since a timestamp you chose. The summary is small enough to put in the prompt. The URL is what the model should cite. Pro includes an MCP server so Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor can call that tool without you hosting one. The setup is in the MCP guide.

What this API is not

• Not investment advice. A headline is information from the publisher.
• Not an SEC filing archive. Legal notices are class-action and investor-alert items.
• Not crypto, forex, or macro. Those are not in the product today.
• Not a license to drop the source link or to republish a publisher's full story.

A small app, end to end

A ticker page needs four calls worth of thinking and usually one request. Ask for that symbol, limit=20, and the types you want on the page. Render the title, the source name, the time, and the summary. Link the title to url. If the type is press_release, you may show the wire text. If the type is news or legal, stop at the summary.

An alert needs the socket, which means Pro. Subscribe to ticker:AAPL for one name, or to several ticker channels. Remember the channels are OR. Write the article id to a set so a reconnect backfill does not page someone twice. The backfill is GET /v1/news with from set to the last published_at you accepted.

An agent needs a tool with a short argument list: tickers, an optional keyword, an optional type, and a look-back. Return the title, summary, tickers, source, and URL. Tell the model to cite the URL and to say when the articles do not explain a move. Pro includes that REST access, and it includes MCP if you would rather not host the tool. Free keys receive HTTP 403 from MCP.

How to choose a plan without a spreadsheet

• A prototype you refresh by hand: Free. 100 requests a day is enough to build the page. The delay is 15 minutes, and history is the last year.
• Anything a customer sees as it happens, a bot, or an assistant: Pro at $15 a month, or the 7-day trial first.
• A research job over the past year: Free can read it, with the 15-minute delay and the daily cap. Dates older than that year need Pro, which searches the full archive.

Pro is $15 a month, or $162 a year. The 7-day trial includes the live feed and the full archive, and a card is required. Free stays at 100 requests a day, delayed 15 minutes, with the last year of history. The reference is the docs, and the plans are on pricing.

Frequently asked questions