Google News API in 2026: there isn't one, so here's how to get Google News results as JSON

Google has no official Google News API. Its News Search API was deprecated in 2011 and has since shut down, and the Custom Search JSON API is closed to new customers and retires on 1 January 2027. Google News RSS feeds still work, but they give encoded redirect links and few filters. Google News Scraper on Apify returns Google's news results for any topic, company or person as JSON: headline, source, publish time, snippet and the publisher's article URL, filtered by time and sorted by relevance or date. It costs $1 per 1,000 articles.

Open Google News Scraper on Apify $1 per 1,000 articles ($0.80 on Gold and above)

Step by step

  1. Create a free Apify account. Sign up at apify.com. The free plan includes $5 of monthly credit, about 5,000 articles, and needs no credit card. Copy your API token from Settings → Integrations.
  2. Search the news. POST to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automationnation~google-news-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN with {"queries": ["OpenAI"], "time": "day", "sortBy": "date"}.
  3. Pick the period and order. time limits results to the past hour, day, week, month or year; sortBy is relevance (Google's order) or date (newest first).
  4. Get real article URLs. resolveArticleUrls (on by default) turns Google's redirect links into the publisher's URL, so you can fetch or dedupe articles directly.
  5. Set country and language. country and language choose the Google edition, for example gb and en, or de and de.
  6. Monitor topics. Schedule hourly or daily runs for brand or competitor monitoring and send new articles to Slack or a webhook, or give an AI agent the MCP server URL below.

Do it from code

Python

# pip install apify-client
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("automationnation/google-news-scraper").call(run_input={
  "queries": [
    "apple earnings"
  ],
  "time": "week",
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 30
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item.get("title"), item.get("source"), item.get("publishedAt"), item.get("url"))

REST API (cURL)

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automationnation~google-news-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"queries": ["apple earnings"], "time": "week", "maxResultsPerQuery": 30}'

From an AI assistant (MCP)

Add this MCP server URL to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and ask in plain English:

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automationnation/google-news-scraper

Alternatives

Other options: Google News RSS feeds (free; encoded links, few filters); NewsAPI.org and GNews (their own source lists; NewsAPI's free plan is for development only); SerpApi's Google News API (monthly subscription); or other Google News Actors on Apify. See the side-by-side comparison of Google News scrapers. See the side-by-side comparison.

FAQ

Is there an official Google News API?

No. The Google News Search API was deprecated in 2011 and later shut down; Google offers no replacement.

Do I get the full article text?

No. You get the headline, snippet, source, publish time and URL. Fetch the URL if you need the full text.

How many articles per search?

Up to 300 per search, 10 per Google results page; set maxResultsPerQuery.

Does it cover news outside the US?

Yes. Set country and language for another Google edition.

What does it cost?

$1 per 1,000 articles ($0.80 on Gold and above).

Written by AutomationNation, the developer of Google News Scraper. Prices checked October 2026.