We built a 400+ source news API instead of paying $200/mo for one

Description and use

Developers now have a free, permission‑verified news API with 400+ RSS feeds, replacing costly paid services.

Problem

Developers building LLM-powered applications need up-to-date news but paid APIs are expensive and scraping is fragile.

Outcome

Developers can now access a large, permission‑verified news dataset for free, reducing cost and complexity compared to paid APIs.

Workflow

• 1. Identify publisher RSS feeds that explicitly allow aggregation.
• 2. Vet each feed for permission and reliability.
• 3. Build a pipeline to fetch, parse, and store articles from all feeds.
• 4. Expose data through a REST API and MCP server.
• 5. Provide free tier (100 requests/day) and API key registration.
• 6. Offer the API to developers for LLM integration.

Evidence

News aggregation APIs charge real money for something publishers already give away for free to anyone who asks nicely: their own RSS feeds.

Source

We built our own aggregation pipeline instead of renting one, and it's live at rhytertimes.com.

Source