Benzinga does not publish a self-serve price card for its News API on its own site, but its data has a public price through a reseller: Massive (formerly Polygon.io) sells Benzinga news, analyst ratings, earnings and guidance at $99/month per dataset on its individual pricing page (read 2026-10-11)1. Direct from Benzinga, news comes in tailored channels priced to the buyer's budget after a conversation with Benzinga's team, with sample files for testing2. Its selling point is low-latency, non-delayed news. For an LLM news-feed pipeline that does not need Benzinga's specific newsroom speed, Polygon.io's Ticker News endpoint (bundled into its Stocks plans with sentiment insights) is the cheaper, self-serve alternative. Track news-source MCP coverage with the Finance MCP Directory.
TL;DR
| Fact | Benzinga News API | Polygon.io Ticker News |
|---|---|---|
| Self-serve published price | No direct price card; $99/month per dataset via Massive1 | Yes, bundled in Stocks plans |
| Free tier | No published free tier; sample data files for testing | Included on Basic (free) plan, 5 calls/min |
| Content | Fully embeddable stories with images | Full article metadata + sentiment insights |
| Latency | Not delayed; delivery built for minimal latency | Hourly-updated news index |
| Sentiment | Via Benzinga products | insights array (sentiment + reasoning) |
The honest headline: Benzinga is a premium, sales-gated newswire; Polygon News is the self-serve budget alternative for most LLM-ingestion jobs.
Benzinga News API: premium, and priced by quote
Benzinga's News API pricing is not publicly listed. Its Stock News API page says content is broken into tailored channels "that can be customized to fit any budget," so a number means talking to Benzinga's team.2 What the page does document:
- Delivery. REST API, TCP streaming and RSS feeds.2
- Volume. 130–160 full-length articles with images a day, plus 600–900 real-time headlines for day-trading and algorithmic platforms.2
- Coverage. The Wilshire 5000, the TSX and about 1,000 other popular tickers.2
- Display rights. Stories are built to be fully embedded on your platform, images included.2
Benzinga's differentiator is speed: its stock news is not delayed and is delivered through mechanisms built for minimal latency.2 Its API suite also lists streaming audio news.2 If your use case is event-driven trading where seconds matter, that latency is the product you are paying for.
What Benzinga does not publish on its own site is a dollar figure for direct access. Its Stock News API page was re-read on 2026-10-18; the API suite index at benzinga.com/apis blocks automated checks, so this page relies on the product page alone. Earlier versions described a fee-free Basic tier (headline, teaser and link), which the current product page no longer mentions.
Can I buy Benzinga data self-serve?
Yes, through Massive. Its partner-data section lists Benzinga at $99/month per dataset, and the Benzinga partner page names six datasets: Analyst Ratings, Consensus Ratings, Analyst Insights, Earnings, Corporate Guidance and News with full articles13. The data is served from Massive's API (for example api.massive.com/benzinga/v1/earnings) with a Massive key, so it arrives in the same JSON conventions as Massive's market data. Business licensing for the same datasets is "Contact for pricing" on Massive's business page4. For a team that only needs Benzinga's headlines and full-text articles in an LLM pipeline, $99/month is a published number you can budget against; for Benzinga's lowest-latency or squawk products, the direct sales route still applies.
Polygon.io News: the self-serve budget alternative
For an LLM pipeline that ingests headlines and bodies for summarization or signal extraction (and does not need Benzinga's newsroom-grade latency) Polygon.io's Ticker News endpoint is the cheaper path because it is bundled into a self-serve data plan you already buy for prices.
Verified facts about the Polygon Ticker News endpoint:5
- Returns per-article
title,description,author,published_utc, publisher details, image/AMP URLs, keywords, and aninsightsarray carryingsentimentandsentiment_reasoningper ticker. - Included in the Stocks plans (Basic through Business); the free Basic plan carries the standard 5-calls/min limit and 2-year history, while paid Stocks plans unlock full history back to mid-2016.
- News data is updated hourly: adequate for research and summarization, not for sub-minute event trading.
So the trade is explicit: Benzinga buys you latency and a curated premium newswire; Polygon News buys you self-serve, bundled, sentiment-tagged news at the price of an hourly refresh cadence.
Which to pick for an LLM news pipeline
- Event-driven, latency-sensitive (news-reaction trading). Benzinga: pay for the speed, get the sales quote.
- Research, summarization, daily/intraday signal extraction. Polygon.io News: bundled, self-serve, sentiment-tagged, hourly refresh.
- Free first pass / prototype. Polygon Basic free tier (5 calls/min), or Benzinga's sample data files if you are evaluating its newswire specifically.
- Filings, not news. Neither: use the free SEC EDGAR API for primary documents.
Verified engine output
The block below runs the Finance MCP Directory filtered to A-graded MCP servers. The Polygon.io read-only server (which exposes the same news endpoint among its data surfaces) is among the top-graded options, which is why a Polygon-based news pipeline is also the cleanest to wire into an agent. The output is computed live from the shipped bundle, not typed by hand.
Connects to
- Finance MCP Directory: MCP servers for news and market-data sources.
- SEC EDGAR API Rate Limits 2026: the free primary-document source for filings, not news.
- Tiingo vs Polygon vs Finnhub 2026: budget vendors that also bundle news.
References
Footnotes
-
Massive. "Pricing", Partner Data section (Benzinga $99/month per dataset). Read 2026-10-11. https://massive.com/pricing ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
Benzinga. "Stock News API" (tailored channels customized to fit any budget; REST, TCP streaming and RSS; Wilshire 5000, TSX and about 1,000 other tickers; 130–160 full-length articles and 600–900 headlines a day; not delayed; fully embeddable). benzinga.com, verified 2026-10-18. https://www.benzinga.com/apis/cloud-product/stock-news-api/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8
-
Massive. "Benzinga" partner page (datasets: Analyst Ratings, Consensus Ratings, Analyst Insights, Earnings, Corporate Guidance, News). Read 2026-10-11. https://massive.com/partners/benzinga ↩
-
Massive. "Business Pricing", Partner Data section (Benzinga: contact for pricing). Read 2026-10-11. https://massive.com/business ↩
-
Polygon.io (Massive). "Ticker News: Stocks REST API" (plan access, hourly recency, history). Re-read 2026-10-11. https://massive.com/docs/rest/stocks/news ↩
Verified engine output
Show the recompute-verified inputs and outputs
| grade | A |
|---|
| total | 11 |
|---|---|
| filtered | 2 |
| servers › row 1 › id | alpaca-mcp-v2 |
| servers › row 1 › name | Alpaca MCP Server v2 |
| servers › row 1 › vendor | alpaca |
| servers › row 1 › official | true |
| servers › row 1 › url | https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-mcp-server |
| servers › row 1 › description | Official Alpaca MCP server (V2, a complete rewrite on FastMCP and OpenAPI). Read + execute across the Alpaca brokerage API for stocks, options and crypto, on paper or live accounts. |
| servers › row 1 › scope | full |
| servers › row 1 › auth | api-key |
| servers › row 1 › idempotency supported | true |
| servers › row 1 › transport | stdio+http |
| servers › row 1 › schema quality | A |
| servers › row 1 › license | MIT |
| servers › row 1 › last commit | 2026-10-12 |
| servers › row 1 › capabilities (7 items) | [...] |
| servers › row 1 › security notes › row 1 | API key has broad trading authority — store securely |
| servers › row 1 › security notes › row 2 | No scoping of key permissions in-server (rely on Alpaca dashboard key scopes) |
| servers › row 1 › security notes › row 3 | Idempotency key supported on order submission |
| servers › row 1 › overall grade | A |
| servers › row 2 › id | polygon-mcp |
| servers › row 2 › name | Massive (formerly Polygon.io) MCP Server |
| servers › row 2 › vendor | polygon |
| servers › row 2 › official | true |
| servers › row 2 › url | https://github.com/massive-com/mcp_massive |
| servers › row 2 › description | Official Massive (formerly Polygon.io) MCP server, self-hosted from the mcp_massive repo with an API key. Read-only access to Massive's stocks, options, futures, indices, forex and crypto endpoints within your plan. Massive also runs a hosted OAuth version at mcp.massive.com (since 2026-09-15). |
| servers › row 2 › scope | read-only |
| servers › row 2 › auth | api-key |
| servers › row 2 › idempotency supported | false |
| servers › row 2 › transport | stdio+http |
| servers › row 2 › schema quality | A |
| servers › row 2 › license | MIT |
| servers › row 2 › last commit | 2026-10-08 |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 1 | stocks aggregates (daily / minute / sec / tick) |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 2 | options chains |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 3 | crypto trades + quotes |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 4 | forex rates |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 5 | news API |
| servers › row 2 › capabilities › row 6 | reference data |
| servers › row 2 › security notes › row 1 | Read-only scope — no trade execution surface |
| servers › row 2 › security notes › row 2 | API key required; safe to scope tightly |
| servers › row 2 › security notes › row 3 | No idempotency concern (no writes) |
| servers › row 2 › overall grade | A |
Computed live at build time.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does the Benzinga News API cost in 2026?
- Direct from Benzinga there is no published price: news comes in tailored channels quoted to the buyer's budget. The one public price is through Massive (formerly Polygon.io), which sells Benzinga news and analyst datasets at $99/month per dataset for individual use (read 2026-10-11).
- Is there a free Benzinga News API tier?
- Benzinga's product page publishes no free tier. It offers sample data files for testing quality and formats, and quotes paid access per channel and budget (checked 2026-10-18).
- What is a cheaper alternative to Benzinga News?
- Polygon.io's Ticker News endpoint, bundled into its self-serve Stocks plans with a per-article sentiment insights array. It refreshes hourly rather than in real time.
- Does Polygon News include sentiment?
- Yes. The Ticker News endpoint returns an insights array with sentiment and sentiment_reasoning per ticker.
- Which is better for news-reaction trading?
- Benzinga, because its non-delayed low-latency newswire is the product. Polygon News updates hourly, which suits research and summarization, not sub-minute event trading.