GDELT Project
Free, open global news event 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, is an open research database that monitors broadcast, print and web news worldwide in more than 65 languages and publishes updates every 15 minutes. Its DOC 2.0 API searches recent coverage and returns article lists and timelines, while bulk event and knowledge-graph files can be queried in Google BigQuery. The main APIs are free and need no key. What you get back is metadata and links, so you still have to fetch and parse each page yourself.
Typical uses: Research & academia, Risk & compliance, Media monitoring. What sets it apart: Free global coverage with 15-minute updates and BigQuery access.
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 |
|---|---|
| +Completely free, bulk files and BigQuery tables included | -No full article text, only URLs, metadata and derived signals |
| +Machine-translated coverage across 65+ languages, which is rare at any price | -No SLA, commercial support or guaranteed uptime |
| +Event coding (who did what to whom, and where) supports geopolitical analysis | -Research-grade data structures take time to understand |
| +Fresh data every 15 minutes |
GDELT Project vs alternatives
How GDELT Project compares to the other top News APIs.
| API | Best for | Key difference | Rating | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NewsCatcher | AI products and monitoring tools needing enriched, deduplicated... | Articles arrive already summarised, clustered and geotagged, so there is less post-processing on your side | 4.7 | Full comparison |
| Perigon | Startups wanting enriched news with transparent tiers. | Published plans from $25 with enrichment and saved-query monitors included | 4.5 | Full comparison |
| Webz.io | Data teams needing deep archives and broad source... | Largest claimed source count on this list and history going back to 2008 | 4.4 | Full comparison |
| Dow Jones Factiva | Enterprises needing licensed premium news for AI or... | Publisher-cleared rights to use paywalled premium content in generative-AI products | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| NewsData.io | Small teams wanting wide country coverage on a... | Daily free credits plus filters for 206 countries and 89 languages | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) | Multilingual event tracking for analysts and research teams. | Merges articles about the same real-world event across languages into one event record | 4.3 | Full comparison |
| LexisNexis Nexis Data+ | Legal, compliance and research teams needing licensed news... | Licensed news, legal filings, patents and sanctions data under one contract | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| Opoint | Monitoring platforms and AML teams needing non-English coverage. | Built as a wholesale feed with heavy non-English and local coverage | 4.2 | Full comparison |
| GNews | Indie developers needing affordable commercial news access. | Two simple endpoints with commercial rights from €49.99 a month | 4.1 | Full comparison |
| Exa | RAG and agent builders needing semantic news retrieval. | Meaning-based search finds relevant pages even when the keywords differ | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| Tavily | Agent developers wanting news results in one tool... | Prompt-ready extracted content, with integrations for LangChain and LlamaIndex | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| NewsAPI.org | Developers who want the most documented, familiar news... | More tutorials and community libraries than any other news API, which shortens learning time | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| World News API | Small apps wanting sentiment and geo filters at... | Location-radius and sentiment filters from the $39 plan up | 4.0 | Full comparison |
| Quantexa News API (Aylien) | Existing Aylien users and Quantexa platform customers. | Mature entity, category and sentiment tagging inherited from Aylien's NLP work | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| Brave Search API | Teams wanting an independent, non-Google news search index. | Its own crawler and index, independent of Google and Bing | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| AP Media API | Publishers and platforms licensing AP journalism. | Primary-source wire content with publishing rights from AP itself | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| RavenPack (Bigdata.com) | Quant funds and financial AI products. | Two decades of entity-level news sentiment built for trading signals | 3.9 | Full comparison |
| SerpApi Google News | Developers who specifically want Google News rankings. | Mirrors Google News results and story groupings as JSON | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Reuters Connect | Media companies licensing Reuters wire content. | Reuters' own global reporting with publishing rights | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Mediastack | Hobby projects and low-volume apps on a tight... | Paid plans from $24.99 with commercial use and historical data | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Guardian Open Platform | Students, researchers and non-commercial apps. | Free full article text with editorial tags from a major publisher | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Diffbot | Teams building custom news collection from chosen sites. | Turns any article URL into clean structured data linked to a Knowledge Graph | 3.8 | Full comparison |
| Benzinga | Brokerages and trading apps needing fast market headlines. | Original market newswire plus ratings and earnings events in one feed | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Marketaux | Fintech side projects needing ticker-tagged news cheaply. | Per-entity sentiment scores on every article, even on the free plan | 3.7 | Full comparison |
| Finnhub | Developers who need market data and news from... | Company news bundled with quotes, fundamentals and estimates | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| TheNewsAPI | Personal projects that need a cheap general feed. | Possibly the cheapest paid tier among general news APIs, if third-party pricing is current | 3.6 | Full comparison |
| NYT Developer APIs | Historians and students researching Times coverage. | Searchable metadata for the full Times archive since 1851 | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| APITube | Developers willing to trial a newer, feature-rich API. | Entity and sentiment filters offered on lower tiers | 3.5 | Full comparison |
| Currents API | Students and hobbyists testing news features for free. | A free tier that developer roundups often single out as generous | 3.4 | Full comparison |
GDELT Project FAQ
What is GDELT Project?
Free, open global news event 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 full article text, only URLs, metadata and derived signals.
What are the best GDELT Project alternatives?
The best alternatives to GDELT Project depend on your use case. Top options are:
- NewsCatcher: articles arrive already summarised, clustered and geotagged, so there is less post-processing on your side
- Perigon: published plans from $25 with enrichment and saved-query monitors included
- Webz.io: largest claimed source count on this list and history going back to 2008
Compare GDELT Project with other News APIs
GDELT Project vs NewsCatcher GDELT Project vs Perigon GDELT Project vs Webz.io GDELT Project vs Dow Jones Factiva GDELT Project vs NewsData.io GDELT Project vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) GDELT Project vs LexisNexis Nexis Data+ GDELT Project vs Opoint GDELT Project vs GNews GDELT Project vs Exa GDELT Project vs Tavily GDELT Project vs NewsAPI.org GDELT Project vs World News API GDELT Project vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) GDELT Project vs Brave Search API GDELT Project vs AP Media API GDELT Project vs RavenPack (Bigdata.com) GDELT Project vs SerpApi Google News GDELT Project vs Reuters Connect GDELT Project vs Mediastack GDELT Project vs Guardian Open Platform GDELT Project vs Diffbot GDELT Project vs Benzinga GDELT Project vs Marketaux GDELT Project vs Finnhub GDELT Project vs TheNewsAPI GDELT Project vs NYT Developer APIs GDELT Project vs APITube GDELT Project vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with GDELT Project before making a decision.