NewsAPI
News API is a simple HTTP REST API for searching and retrieving live articles from all over the web.
Verdict
Common use cases
- Research competitor product launches from tech press
- Pull sentiment data for brand monitoring
- Generate content ideas from trending topics
- Track regulatory news in specific industries
- Compile daily briefings for executive summaries
Integration
- Vendor
- NewsAPI
- Category
- other
- Auth
- API_KEY
- Composio slug
news_api
Tools
Setup
Setup guide
- 11. Go to newsapi.org and create an account to generate your API key. 2. In Switchy, open Settings → Integrations → Add MCP and select NewsAPI. 3. Paste your API key into the authentication field and click Connect. 4. Switchy will validate the key by fetching a test query; if it succeeds, the MCP appears in your workspace's available tools. 5. Open any Space and type '@NewsAPI find articles about electric vehicles from the past week' to confirm the connection works. 6. The MCP returns up to 100 results per query; refine your search with date filters or specific domains to narrow the set. 7. Remember that free-tier keys may fail in production — upgrade to a paid plan if you see 426 errors.
What teammates see: by default, memories from NewsAPI are scoped to the Space (PROJECT visibility) - you can mark any memory PRIVATE or share it ORG-wide.
Works well with
Top models
Compatibility data appears once enough Spaces have used this MCP together with a given model.
How Switchy teams use it
Starter prompts
Competitor News Digest
@NewsAPI find all articles mentioning 'Acme Corp' published in the last 30 days, sorted by relevance. Include the headline, source, and publication date for each.Open in a Space →
Industry Trend Scan
@NewsAPI search for 'generative AI' in articles from wsj.com, bloomberg.com, and ft.com published this month. Show me the five most recent results.Open in a Space →
Daily Briefing Builder
@NewsAPI get today's top headlines from reuters.com and apnews.org. List the title and a one-sentence summary for each of the top ten stories.Open in a Space →
Product Launch Tracker
@NewsAPI find articles about 'smartphone launches' from techcrunch.com and theverge.com in the past seven days. Return the headline and URL for each.Open in a Space →
Regional Market Research
@NewsAPI search for articles about 'renewable energy' published in Germany in the last two weeks. Show me the source, headline, and publish date for each result.Open in a Space →
Example outputs
Illustrative - representative of the model's voice and quality, not literal recordings.
@NewsAPI find the top 5 headlines about renewable energy from the past 24 hours
Here are five recent headlines on renewable energy: (1) 'Solar panel efficiency hits record 47% in lab tests' from Reuters, published 3 hours ago; (2) 'EU approves €2B wind farm project off Danish coast' from Bloomberg, 6 hours ago; (3) 'Tesla announces battery storage expansion in Texas' from TechCrunch, 8 hours ago; (4) 'India's renewable capacity surpasses coal for first time' from The Guardian, 11 hours ago; (5) 'Offshore wind costs drop 30% since 2020, report finds' from Financial Times, 14 hours ago. Each article includes publication timestamp and source credibility rating.
This example shows NewsAPI's ability to filter by topic and recency. The free tier limits requests to 100/day and only returns articles from the past month. Results depend on which sources your API key has access to — premium tiers unlock more publishers and historical archives.
@NewsAPI search for mentions of 'supply chain disruption' in business news sources over the last week, then summarize the main causes cited
Across 47 articles from business publications, three primary causes emerge: (1) Port congestion in Southeast Asia due to typhoon season, mentioned in 18 articles; (2) Semiconductor shortages affecting automotive and electronics manufacturing, cited in 22 articles; (3) Labor strikes at European logistics hubs, referenced in 12 articles. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal provided the most detailed coverage, with analysis linking these factors to Q4 earnings warnings from major retailers.
This demonstrates NewsAPI paired with AI synthesis — the MCP retrieves raw articles, then the model identifies patterns across them. Accuracy depends on the completeness of NewsAPI's index for your chosen sources. Some niche trade publications may not be covered.
@NewsAPI get breaking news from the past hour across all categories and flag anything related to our competitors mentioned in the tech section
Found 23 breaking stories in the past hour. Two mention your competitors: (1) 'Acme Corp raises $50M Series B led by Sequoia' from TechCrunch, published 22 minutes ago — focuses on their AI-powered analytics platform expansion; (2) 'Beta Inc announces partnership with Microsoft Azure' from VentureBeat, 41 minutes ago — integration launches in Q1 2025. The remaining 21 stories span politics (8), sports (6), entertainment (4), and general business (3).
This shows real-time monitoring capability, useful for competitive intelligence or crisis response. NewsAPI's 'breaking news' filter prioritizes recency but may miss stories from slower-publishing outlets. The free tier updates every 15 minutes; paid tiers offer near-instant indexing from major sources.
Use-case deep-dives
When NewsAPI fits a lightweight competitive intel workflow
A 5-person product team at a B2B SaaS company wants to track competitor launches and industry trends without hiring an analyst. NewsAPI works here if the team checks headlines once a day and filters by keyword—say, competitor names or product categories. The API key auth means any team member can query from a shared Switchy workspace without OAuth friction. The trade-off: NewsAPI returns raw article metadata, not summaries or sentiment, so you're still reading headlines manually. If your team needs automated analysis or real-time alerts, you'll outgrow this fast. But for a morning standup ritual where someone pulls 10 headlines and the team discusses over coffee, NewsAPI keeps it simple and cheap.
Why NewsAPI rarely wins for support ticket research
A 3-person support team at a fintech startup wants to pull recent news when a customer mentions a regulatory change or market event in a ticket. NewsAPI can technically do this—search by keyword, return articles from the last week—but the workflow breaks down in practice. Support agents need answers in seconds, not a list of 20 unsorted headlines to skim. Without built-in summarization or relevance ranking beyond recency, the MCP adds a research step instead of removing one. If your tickets reference niche topics or require domain-specific sources, NewsAPI's general-news corpus won't cover it. This scenario works better with a knowledge-base MCP or a search tool that pre-digests content.
When NewsAPI supports a low-frequency content calendar
A solo marketing writer at a 10-person agency publishes one blog post per week and needs 3-5 recent industry examples to cite. NewsAPI fits this cadence: the writer queries once on Monday, pulls articles from the past 7 days filtered by topic, and drops the results into a Switchy draft. The API key setup takes 2 minutes, and the lack of OAuth means no token expiration mid-research. The boundary: if the writer needs historical trends (older than 30 days on the free tier) or non-English sources, NewsAPI's coverage thins out. And if the team scales to daily publishing, manually sorting headlines becomes a bottleneck. For a weekly rhythm with English-language sources, though, this MCP keeps research structured without over-engineering.
Frequently asked
What does the NewsAPI MCP do in Switchy?
It connects your Switchy workspace to NewsAPI's database of news articles and headlines from thousands of sources worldwide. Your team can query breaking news, search historical articles, and pull content by topic, source, or keyword without leaving the AI workspace. Useful for research, content creation, or monitoring industry news in real time.
Do I need a paid NewsAPI account to use this MCP?
You need at least a free NewsAPI developer key, which you paste into Switchy during setup. The free tier limits you to 100 requests per day and excludes some premium sources. If your team needs higher volume or access to paywalled outlets, you'll need NewsAPI's paid Business plan before connecting the MCP.
Can this MCP post articles or update news sources?
No. NewsAPI is read-only — it aggregates and serves news content but doesn't let you publish, edit, or interact with the sources themselves. If you need to post content, you'd connect a separate MCP for your CMS or social platform. This integration is purely for pulling news data into Switchy conversations.
How is this different from just searching Google News?
NewsAPI gives you structured JSON responses with metadata like publication date, author, and source reputation, which Switchy's AI can parse and reason about. Google News is designed for human browsing, not programmatic access. This MCP also respects your API quota and lets you filter by language, country, or category in a single query.
Who on the team should connect the NewsAPI MCP?
Whoever owns your NewsAPI account and has the API key. That person connects it once in Switchy's settings, and the entire workspace can use it in conversations. If you're on NewsAPI's free tier, monitor your daily request limit — heavy usage by multiple teammates can exhaust it quickly.