New York Times API

Provides access to New York Times content including article search, top stories, most popular articles, bestseller lists, and archive data.

Evaluated Mar 07, 2026 (0d ago) vcurrent
Homepage ↗ Other news media nyt rest-api articles books
⚙ Agent Friendliness
59
/ 100
Can an agent use this?
🔒 Security
68
/ 100
Is it safe for agents?
⚡ Reliability
75
/ 100
Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality
0
Documentation
80
Error Messages
72
Auth Simplicity
85
Rate Limits
78

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement
100
Auth Strength
65
Scope Granularity
35
Dep. Hygiene
72
Secret Handling
70

HTTPS enforced; API key in query param risks logging; no per-key scopes or read/write separation

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA
68
Version Stability
82
Breaking Changes
80
Error Recovery
70
AF Security Reliability

Best When

Building apps that specifically feature NYT journalism, books data, or need deep historical article search.

Avoid When

You need broad multi-source news aggregation or full article body text without NYT subscription integration.

Use Cases

  • Searching NYT article archive (since 1851)
  • Fetching top stories by section
  • Tracking NYT bestseller lists
  • Analyzing most-emailed/shared/viewed articles
  • News app content features powered by NYT editorial

Not For

  • Full article text without a NYT subscription
  • Real-time wire news from non-NYT sources
  • High-volume production scraping without enterprise agreement

Interface

REST API
Yes
GraphQL
No
gRPC
No
MCP Server
No
SDK
No
Webhooks
No

Authentication

Methods: api_key
OAuth: No Scopes: No

Single API key via query parameter; separate keys per API product in developer portal

Pricing

Model: free
Free tier: Yes
Requires CC: No

Free with registration; generous for most non-commercial use cases; commercial use requires agreement with NYT

Agent Metadata

Pagination
offset
Idempotent
Full
Retry Guidance
Not documented

Known Gotchas

  • 5 req/min rate limit easily exceeded by agents making parallel calls
  • Separate API keys required per product (Article Search, Top Stories, etc.)
  • Full article body not available; agents receive abstracts only
  • Archive API returns raw metadata that requires parsing

Alternatives

Full Evaluation Report

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$3

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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.

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