The Guardian

Overview

The Guardian Open Platform exposes the Guardian’s full article archive — millions of articles with sections, tags, authors, and bodies — through a free API. It’s one of the best free sources of quality journalism for news apps and research projects.

Tip: for development and testing you can use the API key test (verified live — it works and returns real articles).

Quick Start

Search articles — works with the test key (verified live):

curl "https://content.guardianapis.com/search?q=technology&page-size=5&api-key=test"

A section’s latest articles:

curl "https://content.guardianapis.com/world?api-key=test"

Full article content:

curl "https://content.guardianapis.com/politics/2026/jul/18/example-slug?show-fields=body&api-key=test"

Tags & sections lists:

curl "https://content.guardianapis.com/tags?q=technology&api-key=test"
curl "https://content.guardianapis.com/sections?api-key=test"

Authentication

• Register for a free API key at open-platform.theguardian.com (instant, emailed).
• Send it as api-key (query param or X-Guardian-API-Key header).
• Use test for development.

Rate Limits & Notes

• Free tier has rate limits (roughly 12 requests/second burst, plus daily/monthly caps — see the site).
• Content is licensed for non-commercial use — check the Open Platform terms before commercial redistribution.
• show-fields=body includes the full article body; without it you get metadata only (smaller responses).
• Results support pagination via page / page-size.

FAQ

Is The Guardian API free? Yes — free key with rate limits; content is for non-commercial use.

Can I use the test key in production? No — it’s for development. Register for a real key.

Can I get full articles? Yes — show-fields=body returns the complete article body.