Diffbot
Extraction API that turns article pages into structured data, plus a Knowledge Graph
Founded: 2008 | Menlo Park, California, USA | Team: 11–50
Full article textHistorical archiveNLP enrichment
What is Diffbot?
Diffbot, founded by Mike Tung in 2008 and based in Menlo Park, California, has an estimated 30–40 staff. Point its Article API at any news URL and it returns title, author, date and clean text without a site-specific parser, and Crawlbot can follow a list of publishers you choose. Its Knowledge Graph links articles to companies, people and topics, so it can also be queried as a news source. The free plan includes 10,000 credits at five calls a minute, Startup costs $299 a month for 250,000 credits, and each exported Knowledge Graph entity costs 25 credits. It works best when you want to build your own news collection from chosen sites.
Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Research & academia, Marketing & PR, Financial services. What sets it apart: Parser-free extraction from any article URL, linked to a Knowledge Graph.
What does the Diffbot API include?
REST APIJSONPython SDKCrawlbot
| Capability |
|---|
| Full article text |
| Historical archive |
| NLP enrichment |
Diffbot pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is monthly credit plans. Entry price: $299/mo.
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free tier | Permanent free allowance, usually with request, history or commercial-use limits |
| Monthly plans | Self-serve subscription with published quotas |
| Enterprise contract | Negotiated licence covering volume, rights and SLA |
API prices and quotas change often. Check Diffbot's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
Diffbot pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +No custom scrapers to maintain when a site changes layout | -Five calls a minute on the free plan |
| +10,000 free credits with no card | -Knowledge Graph exports cost 25 credits each |
| +Knowledge Graph links coverage to companies and people | -You assemble the feed yourself |
| +Crawlbot handles crawling the publishers you pick |
Diffbot vs alternatives
How Diffbot compares to the other top News APIs.
| API | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsCatcher | Developers who want clean, deduplicated news without writing... | Summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done | 4.7 | Full comparison |
| NewsData.io | Developers who want a working news call within... | A free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan | 4.6 | Full comparison |
| Perigon | Indie developers and startups wanting enriched data at... | Entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) | Developers building multilingual event or research tools. | Event records that join coverage of one story across languages | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| GNews | Small commercial apps needing a cheap, simple news... | Commercial rights and full article content for under €50 a month | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Data engineers backfilling years of news for datasets. | History back to 2008 and the widest claimed source count here | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Exa | RAG and agent developers needing semantic news retrieval. | Search by meaning with page text returned in the same request | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | Agent builders adding a news tool in a... | Built-in LangChain and LlamaIndex integrations that return prompt-ready text | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| World News API | Location-aware apps on a small budget. | Latitude, longitude and radius filters from the $39 plan, plus a URL text extractor | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.org | Learning projects and prototypes that follow existing tutorials. | The largest pile of tutorials, wrappers and answered questions of any news API | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| SerpApi Google News | Developers who need exactly what Google News ranks. | Google News rankings and story groupings as structured JSON | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| GDELT Project | Zero-budget data projects and research prototypes. | No key, no fee and global coverage refreshed every 15 minutes | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Brave Search API | Developers replacing Bing News Search with an independent... | Results from its own crawler, independent of Google and Bing | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Serper Google News | Agent prototypes needing cheap Google News lookups. | About $1 per 1,000 Google queries on the entry pack, by third-party figures | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Marketaux | Fintech developers needing ticker-tagged news cheaply. | Entity-level sentiment on every article, free plan included | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment | Hobby quants wanting news sentiment beside price data. | Ticker and topic sentiment scores from the same key as market data | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News | Trading-app developers already using Polygon or Massive data. | Per-ticker sentiment with a written reason, included in stock data plans | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Mediastack | Low-traffic sites needing a cheap commercial headline feed. | Commercial use and historical news from $24.99 a month | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Guardian Open Platform | Students and researchers needing free full-text articles. | Free full article bodies from a major newspaper, with editorial tags | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Finnhub | Personal fintech projects needing news and prices from... | A 60-calls-a-minute free key covering company news and market data | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| DataForSEO Google News | High-volume Google News rank tracking on a budget. | About $0.60 per 1,000 Google News result pages in the Standard queue | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| TheNewsAPI | Personal dashboards needing a cheap general feed. | Possibly the lowest paid entry price here, if third-party pricing is current | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| NYT Developer APIs | Students and historians working with Times metadata. | Searchable headlines and abstracts for every Times issue since 1851 | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Benzinga | Trading platforms needing a licensed market newswire. | Original market headlines with ratings and earnings events in one feed | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Quantexa News API (Aylien) | Teams maintaining an existing Aylien integration. | Aylien's fine-grained entity and category tagging | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| APITube | Developers comparing coverage in a side-by-side trial. | Sentiment and entity filters offered on lower tiers | 3.4 | Full comparison |
| Currents API | Coursework and hackathons needing a free feed. | A free tier that tutorials and roundups often recommend | 3.3 | Full comparison |
Diffbot FAQ
What is Diffbot?
Extraction API that turns article pages into structured data, plus a Knowledge Graph
How much does Diffbot charge?
Pricing model: monthly credit plans. The cheapest paid access listed is $299/mo. Free access: yes, with limits.
Which formats and SDKs does Diffbot support?
Diffbot offers REST API, JSON, Python SDK, Crawlbot.
Is Diffbot right for enterprise?
Yes, Diffbot sells enterprise contracts. Main caveat: Five calls a minute on the free plan.
What are the best Diffbot alternatives?
The best alternatives to Diffbot depend on your use case. Top options are:
- NewsCatcher: summaries, story clusters, entities and geotags arrive in the response, so the processing code you would otherwise write is already done
- NewsData.io: a free allowance that refills daily, with country and language filters on every plan
- Perigon: entity, topic and cluster data from the $25 plan up, with all tiers priced publicly
Compare Diffbot with other News APIs
Diffbot vs NewsCatcher Diffbot vs NewsData.io Diffbot vs Perigon Diffbot vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Diffbot vs GNews Diffbot vs Webz.io Diffbot vs Exa Diffbot vs Tavily Diffbot vs World News API Diffbot vs NewsAPI.org Diffbot vs SerpApi Google News Diffbot vs GDELT Project Diffbot vs Brave Search API Diffbot vs Serper Google News Diffbot vs Marketaux Diffbot vs Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment Diffbot vs Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News Diffbot vs Mediastack Diffbot vs Guardian Open Platform Diffbot vs Finnhub Diffbot vs DataForSEO Google News Diffbot vs TheNewsAPI Diffbot vs NYT Developer APIs Diffbot vs Benzinga Diffbot vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) Diffbot vs APITube Diffbot vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with Diffbot before making a decision.