The Guardian API

Free REST API providing access to The Guardian's archive of 2+ million articles, sections, tags, and editorial content with full-text body available on approved plans.

Evaluated Mar 06, 2026 (0d ago) vcurrent

Homepage ↗ Other guardian news journalism content rest-api free

⚙ Agent Friendliness

/ 100

Can an agent use this?

🔒 Security

/ 100

Is it safe for agents?

⚡ Reliability

/ 100

Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality

Documentation

Error Messages

Auth Simplicity

Rate Limits

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement

100

Auth Strength

Scope Granularity

Dep. Hygiene

Secret Handling

Simple API key auth. Read-only news content access. Low security risk. HTTPS required. Free tier API key has rate limits.

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA

Version Stability

Breaking Changes

Error Recovery

Best When

You need high-quality English-language news from a reputable publisher for search, analysis, or enrichment in an agent workflow.

Avoid When

You need multi-source news aggregation, real-time wire feeds, or content from non-UK publishers.

Use Cases

• Searching and retrieving news articles for research agents
• Building news aggregation or media monitoring tools
• Training datasets with high-quality journalism content
• Topic and trend analysis from premium news sources
• Fact-checking agents that reference established news sources

Not For

• Real-time breaking news requiring sub-minute latency
• Commercial redistribution of article content
• Non-Guardian sources (single publisher only)

Interface

REST API

Yes

GraphQL

gRPC

MCP Server

SDK

Webhooks

Authentication

Methods: api_key

OAuth: No Scopes: No

API key as query parameter. Developer tier is free and self-service. Commercial tier requires applying to Guardian directly for full content body access.

Pricing

Model: free

Free tier: Yes

Requires CC: No

Completely free for developer use. Full article body requires commercial agreement. Developer plan returns snippet/trail text only.

Agent Metadata

Pagination

offset

Idempotent

Full

Retry Guidance

Not documented

Known Gotchas

⚠ Article body text is NOT included in developer tier - only trail text/snippet is returned
⚠ Content may be paywalled on the website even though API returns metadata
⚠ show-fields parameter must explicitly list fields like 'body,byline' - nothing is returned by default
⚠ Date range filtering uses ISO 8601 but time component is required for precise filtering
⚠ 5,000 daily call limit resets at midnight UTC not local time

Alternatives

newsapi

Full Evaluation Report

Detailed scoring breakdown, competitive positioning, security analysis, and improvement recommendations for The Guardian API.

$99

API endpoint ↗ Agent guide ↗ Report inaccuracy

Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.