News Providers — What We Get
Last reviewed: 2026-06-27. This is a plain-English overview of the news sources the platform pulls from: what each one gives us on our current subscription, and what a paid upgrade would add. Plans and prices come from our provider config.
At a glance
We currently spend about $178.50/month on news-capable feeds (NewsAPI.ai $90 + FinViz $39.50 + FMP $49). Everything else is free, bundled with another service, or internal. Note that FinViz and FMP also power non-news features, so they aren't purely a news cost.
| Provider | Current plan | What it costs us | What it's best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpaca News | Bundled with trading account | Free | Breaking company & market headlines from the major wires |
| Benzinga | Free | Free | Company-tagged news + analyst ratings, earnings, guidance, dividends |
| Economist Archive | Internal | Free | Deep long-form background analysis |
| FinViz | Elite | $39.50/mo | Fast Bloomberg/WSJ headline scanning |
| FMP | Premium | $49/mo | Full article text, tagged by company |
| GDELT | Free | Free | Broad global event & narrative monitoring |
| NewsAPI.ai | "5K" plan | $90/mo | Premium sources (Bloomberg, WSJ, FT, CNBC) with sentiment scores |
| NewsAPI.org | Developer | Free | Finance headlines, US-focused (CNBC-heavy) |
| NewsData.io | Free | Free | (Weak today — mostly automated filing notices) |
The providers in detail
Alpaca News — free, bundled
Comes at no extra cost with our Alpaca trading account. It aggregates the major financial wires — Reuters, Bloomberg, Benzinga — and can be filtered down to specific companies. We get the headline and a short summary for each story (no sentiment score).
It's excellent value: near–Bloomberg/Reuters quality for breaking company and market news, without a separate bill. We mainly use it for a quick headline scan and to pull stories on a specific ticker.
Upgrade path: none — it simply rides along with the trading account.
Benzinga — free today
A finance-only newsroom where every story is tagged to the specific companies it's about, which makes "show me only Apple stories" reliable. Beyond plain news, Benzinga also feeds us: - analyst upgrades and downgrades with price targets, - an earnings calendar with estimates, - company guidance changes, and - a dividend calendar.
Editorial quality is solid finance-trade level — consistent and useful, though not quite Bloomberg/WSJ tier.
Upgrade path: a paid Benzinga plan would add real-time delivery (the free feed can lag), higher usage limits, and fuller history. Only worth it if we decide to lean on Benzinga as a primary real-time feed.
Economist Archive — internal, free
Our own locally stored library of full Economist articles (and earnings-call transcripts). This is our best source for long-form background and analysis, with complete text and no per-use cost. The trade-off: it's not real-time — refreshed periodically and covering roughly the last 3–4 weeks. Use it for deep context, not breaking news.
Upgrade path: none — it's an internal archive.
FinViz — $39.50/month (Elite)
A fast headline feed that reliably surfaces Bloomberg and WSJ headlines, plus news per company. It's headlines only — no article body, no sentiment. We use it for quick, broad scanning, and the same Elite subscription also powers our stock screener.
Upgrade path: Elite is already the top consumer tier, so there's no meaningful news upgrade beyond what we have.
FMP — $49/month (Premium)
The only feed that gives us the full article text, tagged by company. The catch: the mix leans heavily toward press releases and legal/class-action notices rather than original journalism. Best used to pull the complete text of company-specific items, not for general market reading.
Upgrade path: FMP's higher (Ultimate) tier raises usage limits and history depth, but doesn't change the source mix.
GDELT — free
A firehose of tens of thousands of global news sources in near real time, with no quality filtering — expect non-English outlets, small regional sites, and blogs alongside the majors. It also offers a global "tone" read across all coverage of a topic. Use it to spot broad global events and shifts in narrative, not for clean company news.
Upgrade path: none — it's a free public dataset.
NewsAPI.ai — $90/month (our main quality feed)
Restricted to premium sources only — Bloomberg, WSJ, FT, CNBC, Yahoo Finance — and, crucially, every story comes with a sentiment score from very negative to very positive. That lets the system automatically gauge and weight market mood, not just list headlines. This is our go-to feed when quality and sentiment both matter.
Our current "5K" plan caps how many lookups we can do each month.
Upgrade path: higher tiers raise that monthly volume and unlock deeper archive/search. Relevant if our usage grows or we want longer-running historical sentiment.
NewsAPI.org — free (Developer)
Filtered to finance domains (CNBC, WSJ, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters), but on the free Developer plan the results skew heavily to CNBC, articles are delayed, and the volume is capped. A decent secondary headline source today, but not a primary one.
Upgrade path: paid plans remove the delay, lift the volume limits, and broaden the source mix. Worth considering only if we want a dedicated real-time US breaking-news feed.
NewsData.io — free (weakest feed today)
On our free plan this is the least useful source: results are dominated by automatically generated filing announcements (e.g. "Firm X raised its stake in Company Y") rather than real reporting, and sentiment is locked off.
Upgrade path: the Professional/Corporate plans unlock sentiment scores and better filtering and sources. Given how strong our other feeds are, upgrading is low priority unless we specifically want institutional filing-flow coverage.
Which source for which job
| What we need | Best source(s) |
|---|---|
| News on a specific company | Benzinga, Alpaca News |
| Analyst upgrades / downgrades | Benzinga |
| Upcoming earnings + estimates | Benzinga |
| Company guidance changes | Benzinga |
| Market mood / sentiment | NewsAPI.ai |
| Quick Bloomberg/WSJ headline scan | FinViz, Alpaca News |
| Full text of a company story | FMP |
| Deep background & long-form analysis | Economist Archive |
| Earnings-call transcripts | Economist Archive |
| Broad global event monitoring |  GDELT |
| US breaking news (CNBC) | NewsAPI.org |
| Institutional ownership filings | NewsData.io |
If we wanted to spend more, in priority order
- NewsAPI.ai higher tier — more monthly volume and deeper sentiment history. This is our most valuable paid feed, so it's the first place extra budget pays off.
- Benzinga paid plan — real-time delivery and higher limits, if we want it as a primary live company-news feed.
- NewsAPI.org paid plan — only if we specifically want a fast, broad US breaking-news feed.
- NewsData.io Professional — low priority; mainly unlocks sentiment on a feed that's otherwise filing-heavy.