GDELT Project
Free, keyless global news database updated every 15 minutes
Founded: 2013 | Open research project (no commercial HQ) | Team: Not publicly disclosed
Historical archiveNLP enrichment
What is GDELT Project?
The GDELT Project, created by Kalev Leetaru, watches broadcast, print and web news in more than 65 languages and publishes fresh data every 15 minutes. The DOC 2.0 API needs no key and no signup, which makes it the fastest free start here, and it returns article lists and timelines for a query. Bulk event and knowledge-graph tables are also available in Google BigQuery for SQL users. Two things trip developers up. Responses contain metadata and links only, so you have to fetch and parse each article yourself, and the data formats were designed for researchers, with field names and conventions that take some reading to understand.
Typical uses: Research & academia, Risk & compliance, Media monitoring. What sets it apart: No key, no fee and global coverage refreshed every 15 minutes.
What does the GDELT Project API include?
REST APIJSONCSVBigQuery
| Capability |
|---|
| Historical archive |
| NLP enrichment |
GDELT Project pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is free. Entry price: Free.
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open data | Public data with no account or payment required |
API prices and quotas change often. Check GDELT Project's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
GDELT Project pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +You can call it right now with no account | -No article text, only links and derived fields |
| +BigQuery tables let you query years of events with SQL | -No SLA or support channel |
| +Machine-translated coverage in 65+ languages | -Research-style schemas take time to learn |
| +Event coding of who did what to whom suits geopolitical work |
GDELT Project vs alternatives
How GDELT Project 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 |
| 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 |
| Diffbot | Developers collecting news from a fixed list of... | Parser-free extraction from any article URL, linked to a Knowledge Graph | 3.7 | 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 |
GDELT Project FAQ
What is GDELT Project?
Free, keyless global news database updated every 15 minutes
How much does GDELT Project charge?
Pricing model: free. The cheapest paid access listed is Free. Free access: yes, with limits.
Which formats and SDKs does GDELT Project support?
GDELT Project offers REST API, JSON, CSV, BigQuery.
Is GDELT Project right for enterprise?
GDELT Project lists no enterprise contract, so check SLA and support terms first. Main caveat: No article text, only links and derived fields.
What are the best GDELT Project alternatives?
The best alternatives to GDELT Project 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 GDELT Project with other News APIs
GDELT Project vs NewsCatcher GDELT Project vs NewsData.io GDELT Project vs Perigon GDELT Project vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) GDELT Project vs GNews GDELT Project vs Webz.io GDELT Project vs Exa GDELT Project vs Tavily GDELT Project vs World News API GDELT Project vs NewsAPI.org GDELT Project vs SerpApi Google News GDELT Project vs Brave Search API GDELT Project vs Serper Google News GDELT Project vs Marketaux GDELT Project vs Alpha Vantage News & Sentiment GDELT Project vs Massive (ex-Polygon.io) News GDELT Project vs Mediastack GDELT Project vs Guardian Open Platform GDELT Project vs Diffbot GDELT Project vs Finnhub GDELT Project vs DataForSEO Google News GDELT Project vs TheNewsAPI GDELT Project vs NYT Developer APIs GDELT Project vs Benzinga GDELT Project vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) GDELT Project vs APITube GDELT Project vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with GDELT Project before making a decision.