News · head-to-head
Mediastack vs The Guardian
mediastack (now operated under APILayer) aggregates live and historical news and blog articles from thousands of worldwide sources into a single JSON REST endpoint keyed by an access_key parameter. Its free plan is capped at 100 calls/month with delayed news data and HTTP-only access — HTTPS, real-time delivery, and historical search all require moving to a paid Standard plan or higher.
The Guardian's Open Platform serves the publication's own articles, tags, and section metadata across more than 1.9 million pieces of content, with a free Developer key limited to 1 call/second and 500 calls/day for non-commercial projects. A separate Commercial key removes those caps for a usage-based fee and adds images, audio, and video. Requests are authenticated with an API key and return JSON by default, with an XML format option available.
| Mediastack | The Guardian | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | API Key | API Key |
| Pricing | freemium | freemium |
| Formats | JSON | JSON, XML |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
The Guardian supports 2 response formats, while Mediastack offers fewer — pick The Guardian for more integration flexibility.