Top Stories
Top Stories
New York Times Top Stories API returns NYT top headlines per section (home, world, business, tech, etc.).
Authoritative news source
Does not return full article text — abstracts only
Register an app at developer.nytimes.com for an API key. GET /svc/topstories/v2/{section}.json?api-key=... for section headlines (e.g. home/world/technology).
Uptime · 30-day window
About this API
NYT's API family is free to developers (unlike many other newspapers which require payment). Top Stories is the most commonly used — fetches NYT's current home-page top stories (or a specific section like tech, world, business). Each item returns title, abstract, author, publish time, URL, thumbnail. Common uses: news aggregator apps (users see NYT headlines without leaving the app), daily newsletter auto-compilation from multiple sources' top stories, providing authoritative news context for LLM RAG. Free tier 4000/day is enough for personal projects. Note: API returns metadata only — full article text requires visiting the URL (most are paywalled).
What you can build
- 1News aggregator apps displaying NYT headlines
- 2Daily newsletter auto-compilation
- 3Content recommendation based on NYT headlines
- 4Provide authoritative news context for LLMs
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Authoritative news source
- Detailed section taxonomy (30+ sections)
- Free tier 4000/day
Limitations
- Does not return full article text — abstracts only
- Paywalled article abstracts are also limited
Example request
curl https://nytimes.com/<endpoint>Getting started
Register an app at developer.nytimes.com for an API key. GET /svc/topstories/v2/{section}.json?api-key=... for section headlines (e.g. home/world/technology).
FAQ
Can I access NYT Chinese-language data?+
NYT Chinese site (cn.nytimes.com) content is not in the main API.
Is the free tier sufficient for commercial apps?+
4000/day works for small-to-mid scale. High commercial traffic requires contacting NYT for a partnership.
Technical details
- Auth type
- unknown
- Pricing
- unknown
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- python, javascript, go
- Response time
- 757 ms
- Last health check
- 5/12/2026, 7:37:59 AM
More from Nytimes
New York Times Article Search API full-text-searches NYT articles from 1851 to present — filter by keyword, date, author, section.
New York Times Books API provides NYT bestseller list data — weekly-updated rankings across categories (fiction, non-fiction, children's, etc.).
New York Times Most Popular API returns NYT's recent most-popular articles — sorted by views, emails, Facebook shares.
New York Times Movie Reviews API provides NYT film review data — search by title/director/actor; includes "Critics' Pick" marks.