Diffbot
Article extraction and a Knowledge Graph that includes news
Founded: 2008 | Menlo Park, California, USA | Team: 11–50
Full article textHistorical archiveNLP enrichment
What is Diffbot?
Diffbot was founded in 2008 by Mike Tung and is based in Menlo Park, California, with an estimated 30–40 employees. It uses computer vision and NLP to extract structured articles from any web page, and its Knowledge Graph links articles to organisations, people and topics so it can be queried as a news source. A free plan includes 10,000 credits at five calls a minute, the Startup plan costs $299 a month for 250,000 credits, and exporting one Knowledge Graph entity costs 25 credits. Teams that want to assemble their own news collection get more from it than teams wanting a ready-made feed.
Typical uses: AI & LLM apps, Research & academia, Marketing & PR, Financial services. What sets it apart: Turns any article URL into clean structured data linked to a Knowledge Graph.
What does the Diffbot API include?
REST APIJSONPython SDKCrawlbot
| Capability |
|---|
| Full article text |
| Historical archive |
| NLP enrichment |
Diffbot pricing
Short answer: the pricing model is monthly credit plans. Entry price: $299/mo.
| Access model | What it means |
|---|---|
| Free tier | Permanent free allowance, usually with request, history or commercial-use limits |
| Monthly plans | Self-serve subscription with published quotas |
| Enterprise contract | Negotiated licence covering volume, rights and SLA |
API prices and quotas change often. Check Diffbot's own pricing page before you commit, and confirm that your use is covered by the licence.
Diffbot pros and cons
| Advantages | Things to consider |
|---|---|
| +Extraction handles almost any news layout without custom parsers | -Knowledge Graph exports cost 25 credits per entity, which adds up |
| +The Knowledge Graph connects coverage to companies and people | -You assemble the news feed yourself instead of receiving one |
| +A free plan with 10,000 credits and no card | -The $299 Startup plan is high for small projects |
| +Crawlbot can follow the specific publishers you pick |
Diffbot vs alternatives
How Diffbot 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 |
| GDELT Project | Researchers and data scientists with no budget. | Free global coverage with 15-minute updates and BigQuery access | 4.0 | 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 |
| 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 |
Diffbot FAQ
What is Diffbot?
Article extraction and a Knowledge Graph that includes news
How much does Diffbot charge?
Pricing model: monthly credit plans. The cheapest paid access listed is $299/mo. Free access: yes, with limits.
Which formats and SDKs does Diffbot support?
Diffbot offers REST API, JSON, Python SDK, Crawlbot.
Is Diffbot right for enterprise?
Yes, Diffbot sells enterprise contracts. Main caveat: Knowledge Graph exports cost 25 credits per entity, which adds up.
What are the best Diffbot alternatives?
The best alternatives to Diffbot 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 Diffbot with other News APIs
Diffbot vs NewsCatcher Diffbot vs Perigon Diffbot vs Webz.io Diffbot vs Dow Jones Factiva Diffbot vs NewsData.io Diffbot vs NewsAPI.ai (Event Registry) Diffbot vs LexisNexis Nexis Data+ Diffbot vs Opoint Diffbot vs GNews Diffbot vs GDELT Project Diffbot vs Exa Diffbot vs Tavily Diffbot vs NewsAPI.org Diffbot vs World News API Diffbot vs Quantexa News API (Aylien) Diffbot vs Brave Search API Diffbot vs AP Media API Diffbot vs RavenPack (Bigdata.com) Diffbot vs SerpApi Google News Diffbot vs Reuters Connect Diffbot vs Mediastack Diffbot vs Guardian Open Platform Diffbot vs Benzinga Diffbot vs Marketaux Diffbot vs Finnhub Diffbot vs TheNewsAPI Diffbot vs NYT Developer APIs Diffbot vs APITube Diffbot vs Currents API
Verify all details directly with Diffbot before making a decision.