GDELT CloudGDELT Cloud
Compare · Updated 13 November 2026

GDELT Project alternatives, compared

Three of these return coded events: the GDELT Project, GDELT Cloud and ACLED. Two return searchable news articles: Event Registry and NewsCatcher. Each is compared on what a record is, coverage, access, licence and price, and every fact links to the page it came from.

At a glance

Five event and news data services compared
The GDELT ProjectGDELT CloudACLEDEvent Registry (NewsAPI.ai)NewsCatcher
What it isAn open project publishing free event, knowledge-graph and news-search data[1]Codes the GDELT Project article stream into Events, Stories and Entities, served by an API and an MCP server[2][3]A US non-profit collecting data on political violence and protest[4]A news-intelligence API from Event Registry d.o.o. of Ljubljana[5]News and web-search APIs from NewsCatcher, Inc.[6][7]
A record isA CAMEO-coded event, a per-article knowledge-graph row, or an article in search results[8][9][10]A coded Event (CAMEO+ or conflict), a Story that clusters the reporting, or an Entity[3]A coded event with its type, actors, location, fatalities and sources[11]A news article with entities, topics and sentiment; articles are grouped into multilingual event clusters[12][13]A news article, optionally clustered and enriched with entities and sentiment[14]
CoverageEvents from 1979 (version 1.0) and February 2015 (version 2.0); 65 languages machine-translated[15][16][8]Worldwide, continuous from 1 March 2026; 175 countries and territories on 11 November 2026[17]Every country and territory; start years range from 1997 for most of Africa to 2021 for Canada and Oceania[18][11]150,000+ publishers in 50+ languages; archive from 2014[12][19]140,000+ sources in 100+ countries; history from 2019 on Enterprise[6][20]
UpdatesEvery 15 minutes[16]Hourly[3]Coded in real time, published weekly[21]Minutes after publication[12]Most content within 10 minutes[6]
AccessNo key or account: files, BigQuery and keyless APIs; the DOC API is rate-limited[1][22]Account and API key; public documentation; MCP server[23][24]A myACLED account; API by OAuth token; access level set by your organisation's email domain[25][26]Account and API key; public documentation; official MCP server[27][28]Self-serve account and key for the News API; older v3 products through sales[29]
LicenceUnlimited use, including commercial, with a citation and a link to the GDELT Project[30]Free: personal evaluation; Academic & Research: publish with credit; Builder, Watch, Analyst, Intelligence: internal use and prototypes; Enterprise: display and reuse by agreement[31]Non-commercial by default; commercial entities need a corporate licence; attribution required[32][33]Paid plans allow commercial use; the data may not be redistributed or resold as such[5]Commercial data rights on Free and pay-as-you-go; redistribution and resale on Enterprise[20][7]
Price modelFree; BigQuery bills queries beyond 1 TiB a month[34]Free account with a one-time 200-call API starter credit; monthly plans from $59 (Builder), metered in Query Units[35]Licences priced on request[26]Free plan with 2,000 searches; monthly token plans, the 5K plan at $90[19]10,000 free credits every 30 days; pay as you go from $25; Enterprise custom[20]

The GDELT Project

The GDELT Project publishes CAMEO-coded Events and a Global Knowledge Graph as files every 15 minutes, mirrors them in Google BigQuery, and offers keyless search APIs over recent news[16][1]. Version 1.0 Events reach back to 1979[15]. The data is free for any use, including commercial, provided the use cites the GDELT Project and links to its website[30]. The DOC and Context APIs are rate-limited, and heavy users are pointed to the downloadable datasets[22].

Endpoints, parameters, limits and errors for each GDELT Project API are in the GDELT Project API guide.

GDELT Cloud

GDELT Cloud reads the GDELT Project article stream every hour and codes its own Events, clusters the reporting into Stories and resolves people, organizations and places to Entities[3]. Its conflict Events follow the event types of ACLED's published codebook without using ACLED's data[36]. Continuous coding starts on 1 March 2026; backfill of earlier periods is planned. The REST API and the MCP server serve the same records[24].

See the global events database and the conflict data API for real responses.

ACLED

ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) is a non-profit that codes political violence and demonstrations into events with a disorder type, event type, sub-event type, actors, location and reported fatalities[4][11]. Data is coded in real time and released weekly, with expedited releases on higher access levels[21]. API access needs a myACLED account and an OAuth token; the access level follows the organisation's email domain[25][26]. The default licence is non-commercial, and published use must credit ACLED as its attribution policy describes[32][33].

Event Registry (NewsAPI.ai)

Event Registry's NewsAPI.ai returns news articles enriched with recognized entities, topics and sentiment, and groups articles about the same happening into multilingual event clusters[12][13]. It lists 150,000+ publishers in 50+ languages with an archive from 2014[12]. Plans are monthly token allowances, starting with a free plan of 2,000 searches[19]. An official MCP server is available[28].

NewsCatcher

NewsCatcher's News API returns articles with their title, authors, date, link, language, country and content, with optional clustering and enrichment[14]. It lists 140,000+ sources in 100+ countries[6]. Pricing is by credit: 10,000 free credits every 30 days, pay-as-you-go top-ups from $25, and custom Enterprise terms, which add history back to 2019 and the right to redistribute[20].

Which fits

Which service fits which need
You needLook at
Free, raw event and knowledge-graph files with long historyThe GDELT Project
Coded Events, Stories and Entities through one API and an MCP serverGDELT Cloud
Political violence and protest data with long regional historiesACLED
Searching and monitoring news articles in many languagesEvent Registry, NewsCatcher

A head-to-head of GDELT Project event rows against GDELT Cloud Events for the same articles is on Situations vs GDELT Project. Prices and terms change: if one here is out of date, tell us at hello@gdeltcloud.com.

Next

GDELT Project API guide →Global events database →Conflict data API →All comparisons →

Sources

  1. [1] The GDELT Project, Datachecked 13 November 2026
  2. [2] GDELT Cloud, Aboutchecked 13 November 2026
  3. [3] GDELT Cloud, Methodologychecked 13 November 2026
  4. [4] ACLED, About ACLEDchecked 13 November 2026
  5. [5] Event Registry, Terms of servicechecked 13 November 2026
  6. [6] NewsCatcher, NewsCatcherchecked 13 November 2026
  7. [7] NewsCatcher, Terms and conditionschecked 13 November 2026
  8. [8] The GDELT Project, GDELT Event Codebook V2.0 (PDF)checked 13 November 2026
  9. [9] The GDELT Project, GDELT Global Knowledge Graph Codebook V2.1 (PDF)checked 13 November 2026
  10. [10] The GDELT Project, GDELT DOC 2.0 API Debuts!checked 13 November 2026
  11. [11] ACLED, ACLED Codebookchecked 13 November 2026
  12. [12] Event Registry, NewsAPI.aichecked 13 November 2026
  13. [13] Event Registry, Documentation: search eventschecked 13 November 2026
  14. [14] NewsCatcher, News API reference: search articleschecked 13 November 2026
  15. [15] The GDELT Project, GDELT 1.0 event fileschecked 13 November 2026
  16. [16] The GDELT Project, GDELT 2.0: Our Global World in Realtimechecked 13 November 2026
  17. [17] GDELT Cloud, API responses captured for these pagesOur requestchecked 13 November 2026
  18. [18] ACLED, Country and time period coveragechecked 13 November 2026
  19. [19] Event Registry, Planschecked 13 November 2026
  20. [20] NewsCatcher, Pricingchecked 13 November 2026
  21. [21] ACLED, When are ACLED data updated?checked 13 November 2026
  22. [22] The GDELT Project, Ukraine, API Rate Limiting & Web NGrams 3.0checked 13 November 2026
  23. [23] GDELT Cloud docs, API keyschecked 13 November 2026
  24. [24] GDELT Cloud docs, MCP serverchecked 13 November 2026
  25. [25] ACLED, API documentation: getting startedchecked 13 November 2026
  26. [26] ACLED, myACLED FAQschecked 13 November 2026
  27. [27] Event Registry, Documentation: introductionchecked 13 November 2026
  28. [28] GitHub, Event Registry, newsapi-mcpchecked 13 November 2026
  29. [29] NewsCatcher, Quickstartchecked 13 November 2026
  30. [30] The GDELT Project, Terms of usechecked 13 November 2026
  31. [31] GDELT Cloud, Terms of Service: display rights by planchecked 13 November 2026
  32. [32] ACLED, End User License Agreementchecked 13 November 2026
  33. [33] ACLED, Attribution policychecked 13 November 2026
  34. [34] Google Cloud, BigQuery pricingchecked 13 November 2026
  35. [35] GDELT Cloud, Pricingchecked 13 November 2026
  36. [36] GDELT Cloud docs, Conflict datachecked 13 November 2026