What’s included in the free plan?#

The APITube free plan costs $0 and gives you 200 requests per cycle and one webhook. Real-time streaming (SSE/WebSocket) is not available on the free plan — it requires a paid plan. It reaches every search and retrieval endpoint, but article content comes back as a preview — the body and description are trimmed — and you can page through only the first 5 pages of any result set. It is built for evaluating the API and wiring up an integration; a paid plan removes the content preview and raises every limit.

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?title=Apple&api_key=YOUR_FREE_KEY"

That call runs against the full live index and returns real, matching articles — the free plan is not a separate sandbox. What differs from a paid plan is how much you can pull and how much of each article’s text you see.

What do you get on the free plan?#

The free plan unlocks the whole API surface at no cost, with these allowances:

• 200 requests per cycle — your standard request pool (the API calls these points). Each billed call spends one, exactly like a paid plan.
• No streaming — the real-time SSE/WebSocket feed is a paid-plan feature; the free plan has 0 streaming credits.
• No SSE connection — the free plan cannot open a live /v1/news/stream connection; upgrade to a paid plan to stream.
• 1 webhook — you can save one webhook subscription.
• Search & retrieval endpoints — search, top headlines, single-article lookup, story clusters, counts, trends and the directories all work on the free plan.
• per_page up to 250 — the page-size cap is the same 250 as every plan; only the number of pages is limited.

The 200-request pool runs on a short 1-day cycle (validity_days: 1), where paid monthly plans use a 31-day cycle. So the free plan is a small, fast-renewing allowance rather than a large monthly one. For how the request pools work in detail, see how requests and credits work.

Why is article content truncated on the free plan?#

On the free plan the API returns each article’s long text fields as a preview, not in full. The body, body_html and description are cut to the first 200 characters and tagged with ...[Upgrade subscription plan], and URL fields such as href and image are shortened to a few characters. This is expected behaviour, not an error — the HTTP status is still 200 and the articles are real.

The structured data you filter and sort on is not trimmed. The title (headline), entities, categories, topics, sentiment scores, published_at and language all come back complete, so you can build and test most of an integration on the free plan and only miss the full body text.

{
    "title": "Apple reports record quarterly revenue",
    "description": "Apple posted its strongest December quarter to date, driven by...[Upgrade subscription plan]",
    "body": "Apple Inc. said on Thursday that revenue rose across every product...(+1962 chars hidden)...[Upgrade subscription plan]"
}

The same preview also applies to test keys. For the full field-by-field breakdown of what gets masked, see why are my results masked or placeholder text.

How many results can you retrieve on the free plan?#

The free plan is capped at the first 5 pages of any query. Asking for page 6 or higher returns HTTP 400 with error ER0173 (Free plan is limited to the first 5 pages. Upgrade your subscription plan to paginate further.). Because per_page still goes up to 250, five pages at 250 results each means you can reach up to 1,250 articles per query on the free plan.

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?title=Tesla&per_page=250&page=5&api_key=YOUR_FREE_KEY"

Page 5 with per_page=250 is the deepest a free-plan request can go. To page further into a large result set, upgrade to a paid plan, which lifts the 5-page limit.

What happens when the free requests run out?#

When your 200-request pool reaches zero, the next billed call returns 402 with error ER0176. The free plan has no pay-as-you-go fallback — that cash-balance overflow is a paid-plan feature — so requests resume when your quota renews on the next cycle, or immediately if you upgrade. A search that matches nothing is not charged, so retrying a zero-result query to refine filters is free. See what happens when you run out of requests.

Test keys (prefix api_test_) are a useful companion here: they hit the live API but never draw down your 200-request pool, so you can keep prototyping request shapes without spending free quota. The trade-off is that test keys also preview content, just like the free plan.

How to unlock full content and more quota#

To remove the preview and the page cap, move to a paid plan and use a live key (prefix api_live_). On a paid plan the body, body_html, description and URLs come back in full, the 5-page limit is lifted, the request and streaming pools are much larger, and you can hold more concurrent SSE connections and save more webhooks. To pick the right tier, see which plan is right for me.

Common Questions#

• Does the free plan cost anything?
• Can I see full article text on the free plan?
• Why do I get an error asking for page 6?
• How often does the free quota renew?

Does the free plan cost anything?#

No. The free plan is $0 — there is no charge and no card required to make requests within its 200-request allowance. You only pay when you upgrade to a paid plan or add a pay-as-you-go balance, and pay-as-you-go itself is a paid-plan feature.

Can I see full article text on the free plan?#

No. On the free plan the body, body_html and description are trimmed to a 200-character preview ending in ...[Upgrade subscription plan]. The headline, entities, sentiment and other structured fields are complete, but the full article text requires a live key on a paid plan.

Why do I get an error asking for page 6?#

Because the free plan is limited to the first 5 pages of results. Requesting page=6 or higher returns HTTP 400 with ER0173. The filter still matched — you have simply reached the free-plan pagination cap. Raise per_page (up to 250) to fit more into those five pages, or upgrade to page deeper.

How often does the free quota renew?#

The free plan’s 200-request allowance runs on a 1-day cycle (validity_days: 1), unlike the 31-day cycle of the monthly paid plans. So it is a small, frequently-renewing pool rather than a large monthly one — good for light, ongoing testing, not for pulling large datasets in one go.