APITube News MCP

Real-time and archived news search for AI agents, over the Model Context Protocol.

Hosted at https://mcp.apitube.io/ — no package to install, no local process to keep alive.

Quick Start • Tools • Filters • Prompts • Pricing • Troubleshooting • Docs • Support

300,000+ sources · 177 countries · 59 languages. Sentiment and entities on every article.

Overview

The APITube MCP server gives an assistant live access to the world's news as structured data, not scraped HTML. It exposes 2 tools:

search_news — most of the News API filter set in one call: keywords, language, country, source domain and quality rank, sentiment range, named entities, media, date ranges, sorting, faceting and highlighting.
suggest — resolves a name like "Tesla" into the entity, category, topic and industry IDs the precise filters need.

Every article comes back enriched by the pipeline behind it: sentiment scores, extracted entities (people, organizations, locations, brands, events), IPTC categories, topics and industries.

Code

MCP client  →  mcp.apitube.io  →  api.apitube.io
               (this server)      (News API)

JSON-RPC over HTTP, Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>

Property	Value
Endpoint	`https://mcp.apitube.io/`
Transport	Streamable HTTP (`POST /`), JSON-RPC 2.0
Protocol	`2025-11-25`, negotiated down to your client's version (`2024-11-05` works)
Server	`APITube News MCP-Server` `1.0.0`
Auth	`Authorization: Bearer <API_KEY>`, or `X-API-Key: <API_KEY>`
Registry	`io.apitube/news` (`server.json`)

Quick Start

Get an API key at apitube.io.
Add the server to your client with the block below — each one is also a ready file in configs/.
Restart the client and ask it something like "find positive breaking news about Tesla in English from the last week".

Claude Code

Terminal

claude mcp add --transport http apitube-news https://mcp.apitube.io/ \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Check it with /mcp. To commit the server to a project instead, put configs/claude-code.mcp.json at the repo root as .mcp.json.

Cline

MCP Servers → Configure, or ~/.cline/mcp.json for the CLI:

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apitube-news": {
      "type": "streamableHttp",
      "url": "https://mcp.apitube.io/",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" },
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

type must be set explicitly — without it Cline falls back to the legacy SSE transport, which this server does not serve. Both tools are read-only, so autoApprove: ["search_news", "suggest"] is safe if you would rather not confirm every call.

Cursor

~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (per project):

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apitube-news": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apitube.io/",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Settings → MCP should list apitube-news as connected.

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop only launches local processes, so bridge the hosted server with mcp-remote. Edit claude_desktop_config.json (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on macOS, %APPDATA%\Claude\ on Windows):

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apitube-news": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.apitube.io/",
        "--header",
        "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Restart the app; the tools appear under the slider icon.

VS Code (GitHub Copilot)

.vscode/mcp.json, with the key prompted instead of stored in plain text:

config.json

{
  "inputs": [
    { "type": "promptString", "id": "apitube-key", "description": "APITube API Key", "password": true }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "apitube-news": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.apitube.io/",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:apitube-key}" }
    }
  }
}

Open Copilot Chat in Agent mode and enable the apitube-news tools.

Windsurf

~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json — note serverUrl, not url:

config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apitube-news": {
      "serverUrl": "https://mcp.apitube.io/",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Windsurf Settings → Cascade → MCP Servers → refresh.

Any other client, or plain curl

Anything that speaks Streamable HTTP takes the URL directly; clients limited to stdio go through mcp-remote, as in the Claude Desktop block. The handshake needs no key:

Terminal

curl -s -X POST https://mcp.apitube.io/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"curl","version":"1.0.0"}},"id":1}'

config.json

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "result": {
    "protocolVersion": "2024-11-05",
    "serverInfo": { "name": "APITube News MCP-Server", "version": "1.0.0" },
    "capabilities": { "tools": { "listChanged": true }, "prompts": { "listChanged": true } }
  }
}

A real search adds the key:

Terminal

curl -s -X POST https://mcp.apitube.io/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_news","arguments":{"title":"Bitcoin","language":{"code":"en"},"per_page":5}},"id":1}'

Tools

Tool	Title	Kind	What it does
`search_news`	News Search	read-only	Searches articles across the News API filter set
`suggest`	Resolve Taxonomy IDs	read-only	Turns a name or prefix into entity / category / topic / industry IDs

`search_news`

Arguments are nested objects, never dotted strings:

jsonc

{ "language": { "code": "en" } }      // ✅
{ "language.code": "en" }             // ❌ rejected

Three things worth knowing before the first call:

The article body is not returned by default. The default field list is id,title,href,published_at,description,source.domain. Ask for the text explicitly with fl: "title,href,body".
One response carries at most 25 articles. per_page defaults to 10 and is clamped to 25; walk further with page. If a result set still has to be cut — 25 articles of full text can be large — the response gains an _mcp_truncated field saying how many were omitted.
A title search spans at most 31 days. With no dates it covers the last 31 days; a wider explicit range fails with 400 ER0110. Split longer periods into month-sized windows. Searches without a title filter have no range limit.

Misspelled arguments are rejected with JSON-RPC -32602 and a suggestion, instead of being silently ignored:

Code

Unknown parameter 'langauge.code'. Did you mean 'language.code'?

export, query and prompt are deliberately not exposed.

`suggest`

The precise filters take IDs you cannot guess, so resolve them first:

jsonc

suggest({ type: "entities", prefix: "Tesla" })
// → [{ id: 474, name: "Tesla Robotaxi", type: "brand", … }, …]

search_news({ entity: { id: "474" }, language: { code: "en" } })

type is one of entities, categories, topics, industries; prefix is a name or its beginning. Both are required. Matching is by prefix, so read the names before filtering on the first hit.

Filters

Everything below belongs to search_news. Content, taxonomy, language, author and source filters have an ignore.* twin for exclusion (ignore.title, ignore.entity.id, ignore.source.domain, …); sentiment, media and time filters do not. Multi-value filters take up to 3 comma-separated values. has_* and is_* take 0 or 1, not true/false.

Content and taxonomy

Argument	Example
`title`	`"Bitcoin"` — up to 3 comma-separated keywords, quotes for an exact phrase
`category.id`	`"medtop:04000000"` — IPTC taxonomy
`topic.id`	`"industry.crypto_news"` — slug, from `suggest`
`industry.id`	`"411"` — numeric, from `suggest`
`entity.id`	`"474"` — from `suggest`
`person.name` · `organization.name` · `location.name`	`"Elon Musk"` · `"Tesla,Apple"` · `"Tokyo"`
`brand.name` · `event.name` · `disaster.name` · `disease.name`	`"Nike"` · `"Olympics"` · `"Earthquake"` · `"COVID-19"`
`author.id` · `author.name` · `has_author`	`"123"` · `"Jane Smith"` · `1`
`language.code`	`"en,de,fr"`

Sentiment

Argument	Example
`sentiment.overall.polarity`	`"positive"` \| `"negative"` \| `"neutral"`
`sentiment.overall.score.{min,max}`	`-1.0` … `1.0`
`sentiment.title.score` · `sentiment.body.score`	same range, headline or body only
`sentiment.mixed` · `sentiment.consistent`	`1` — title and body disagree / agree

Sources and quality

Argument	Example
`source.domain` · `source.id`	`"cnn.com,bbc.com"` · `"314"`
`source.country.code`	`"us,uk,de"`
`source.bias`	`"left"` \| `"center"` \| `"right"`
`source.rank.opr.{min,max}`	OpenPageRank, 0–7
`is_premium_source` · `is_verified_source`	OPR ≥ 6 · OPR ≥ 5
`is_duplicate` · `is_paywall`	`0` to exclude

Media, shape and time

Argument	Example
`has_image` · `has_video` · `has_hq_images` · `is_media_rich`	`1`
`media.images.count.{min,max}` · `media.images.{width,height}` · `media.videos.count`	`{ "min": 2 }`
`is_breaking` · `is_long_read` · `is_short_read`	`1` — read time ≥ 5 min / < 3 min
`read_time.{min,max}`	minutes
`published_at.{start,end}`	`"2026-01-01"` … `"2026-01-31"`, ISO 8601

Output: sorting, paging, faceting, highlighting

Argument	Example
`sort.by`	`published_at`, `relevance`, `engagement`, `quality`, `controversy`, `trust`, `source.rank.opr`, `sentiment..score`, `media.`, `read_time`, …
`sort.order`	`"asc"` \| `"desc"`
`page` · `per_page`	`1` · `10` (max 25)
`fl`	`"id,title,source.name,sentiment.overall.score"` — dot notation for nested fields
`facet`	`true`, or `{ "field": "source.id,language.id", "limit": 20, "mincount": 5 }`
`facet.range`	`{ "field": "published_at", "start": "2026-01-01", "end": "2026-12-31", "gap": "1MONTH" }`
`hl`	`true`, or `{ "fl": "title,body", "fragsize": 300, "tag": { "pre": "<mark>", "post": "</mark>" } }`

Prompts

Slash commands in clients that support MCP prompts:

Prompt	Arguments	What it does
`monitor_company`	`company` (required), `days`	Recent coverage and sentiment for one company
`topic_sentiment`	`topic` (required), `language`	Sentiment breakdown of coverage on a topic
`breaking_news`	`subject`, `country`	Latest breaking stories, optionally narrowed
`compare_coverage`	`subject_a`, `subject_b` (both required)	Volume and sentiment, two subjects side by side

Use cases

You want to	Ask for	Tools
Watch a brand across languages	mentions of the company with sentiment, last 7 days	`suggest` → `search_news`
Feed a trading or risk model	entity + industry filtered news with sentiment scores	`suggest` → `search_news`
Ground an agent in live news	recent articles with `fl: "title,href,body"` for RAG	`search_news`
Track a running story	`is_breaking: 1`, sorted by `published_at`	`search_news`
Measure share of voice	two subjects compared by volume and sentiment	`compare_coverage`
Study an archive	a date range with no title filter — no 31-day limit	`search_news`

Pricing

The MCP server is part of the paid plans; the free tier covers the REST API only.

Plan	Price	Requests	MCP server
Free	$0	100/day	—
Starter	$29/mo	10,000/mo	✅
Basic	$99/mo	50,000/mo	✅
Professional	$199/mo	150,000/mo	✅

Annual billing takes 20% off. Current numbers always live at apitube.io/pricing.

Page size is capped separately: through MCP one response holds at most 25 articles on every plan, regardless of the larger per_page the REST API allows.

Troubleshooting

Auth and transport failures arrive as JSON-RPC -32000 with an APITube code in the message and the matching HTTP status.

Code	HTTP	Meaning	Fix
`ER0201`	401	No API key reached the server	The header is missing, or the client strips custom headers — use the `mcp-remote` bridge
`ER0202`	401	Key invalid or revoked	Re-copy it from apitube.io
`ER0230`	401	Key expired	Extend the expiry in the key's settings
`ER0601` / `ER0602`	403	IP or referrer not allowed for this key	Adjust the key's restrictions
`ER0603`	403	Key not permitted to call this tool	Grant it access to `search_news` / `suggest`
`ER0429`	429	Over 120 requests/minute	Slow down — the limit is per key
`ER0900`	503	Key validation temporarily unavailable	Retry; the key is fine, do not reissue it

Other symptoms

Symptom	Cause
Client reconnects in a loop	It opened a `GET` SSE stream. Expected: the server answers `405 Allow: POST` because it has no event stream, and compliant clients fall back to `POST`
`-32602` with a suggested name	Misspelled argument — arguments are nested objects, never dotted keys
`403` from a Python script	The default `Python-urllib/3.x` user agent is rejected at the edge. Send a real `User-Agent`, or use `requests`
Search returns nothing for an old story	A title search only covers 31 days. Add `published_at` and walk month by month
Articles arrive without text	The body is excluded by default. Add `fl: "title,href,body"`

Documentation

Resource	Link
MCP server reference	https://docs.apitube.io/platform/news-api/ai/mcp-server
Editor setup, one-click install links	https://docs.apitube.io/platform/news-api/ai/code-editors
All News API parameters	https://docs.apitube.io/platform/news-api/everything
Authentication	https://docs.apitube.io/platform/news-api/authentication
Machine-readable server card	https://docs.apitube.io/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json
Agent skill, SDKs, migration kits	https://github.com/apitube
Installing this server as an agent	`llms-install.md`

Registry

Published in the official MCP Registry from server.json in this repository:

mcp-name: io.apitube/news

See more on Claude Market's MCP directory.

Support

Channel	Where
Bugs and corrections	open an issue
Account and billing	support@apitube.io
Everything else	https://apitube.io/contact

Found an argument that behaves differently from what is written here? Open an issue with the request you sent and the response you got — those corrections are the most useful thing you can file.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.