Nytimes NYT Archive API
Browse all Nytimes APIs30
AI ReadinessNon-Ready (F)30/100
Official vendor OpenAPI document · agent-readyMediaContent DeliveryapiKey1 EndpointsREST
For Agents
Retrieve a complete month of New York Times article metadata going back to 1851 from a single year/month endpoint, authenticated with an API key in the query string.
Use for: Get every NYT article published in a specific month and year, Retrieve all articles from January 1900 for a research project, Build a local copy of NYT article metadata for the 1960s, List articles published by The New York Times in March 1969
Not supported: Does not handle full-text query, real-time alerts, or article body retrieval - use for monthly metadata bulk download only.
The New York Times Archive API returns the complete list of NYT articles published in a given month, going back to September 1851. Each response is a month's worth of article metadata - headlines, abstracts, bylines, sections, keywords, and links - making it the canonical bulk-retrieval endpoint for NYT content. The API exposes a single GET path keyed by year and month, which is intentionally the simplest possible surface for building local mirrors of NYT metadata, training corpora, longitudinal analysis sets, and timelines.
Install Jentic One Beta
Connect the NYT Archive API to your agent
Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the NYT Archive API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
1
Step 1: Jentic One Host machine
# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fnytimes.com%2Farchive" | sh2
Step 2: Agent machine
# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fnytimes.com%2Farchive" | sh
jentic register # connects your agent to your Jentic One instanceJentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.
Capabilities
What an agent can do with NYT Archive API.
Retrieve every NYT article published in a given month with full metadata
Build a local mirror of NYT article metadata back to September 1851
Construct a longitudinal corpus by walking month-by-month from a chosen start year
Extract section, byline, and keyword data from each article record
Power timeline visualisations and 'on this day' features from historical NYT data
Use Cases
Patterns agents use NYT Archive API for, with concrete tasks.
★ Historical News Corpus Build
Mirror NYT article metadata month by month into a local store to support research on language change, topic prevalence, or named entities over time. The single /year/month.json endpoint returns the full month in one response, which keeps the build script simple and easy to resume. Setup takes a few hours, with the bulk of the work being respectful pacing of requests.
Walk years 1900 through 2020 and call GET /{year}/{month}.json for each, writing the response JSON to local storage for later analysis.
On This Day Feature
Build an 'on this day' module for a website or newsletter that surfaces NYT headlines from the same date in past years. The Archive API returns the full month, so a worker can preselect dates and cache the relevant entries. This provides richer historical context than scraped sources because the metadata is canonical and includes section and byline information.
GET /{year}/{month}.json for the current month minus 50 years, filter to today's date, and return the top three headlines.
Agent-Driven Historical Research
Let an AI agent answer 'what was The New York Times reporting in October 1962?' by calling the Archive API for that month and summarising the headlines. Through Jentic, the agent searches by intent and gets only the operations it needs, with the API key held in the platform's vault rather than in the agent's context.
Search Jentic for 'list NYT articles for a given month', load the operation, and summarise the top headlines from October 1962.
Key Endpoints
1 endpoints — the new york times archive api returns the complete list of nyt articles published in a given month, going back to september 1851.
METHOD
PATH
DESCRIPTION
GET
/{year}/{month}.json
Retrieve all NYT articles published in the given month
GET
/{year}/{month}.json
Retrieve all NYT articles published in the given month
Jentic AI Readiness Score
This API is usable in Jentic One now. Its AI-readiness score against Jentic's framework shows where it stands today and where improvements would make it even easier for agents to use.
A
Archive API
- Non-Ready (F)30/100
72
Foundational Compliance56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility15
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience94
Agent Usability15
Security63
AI DiscoverabilityPowered by JenticScoring Framework 1.0.0 | Scoring Engine 0.4.0
Show dimension breakdown
72
Foundational Compliance
Base layer of spec validity and structural soundness.
Grade: A-Signals: 4
88%
Lint Results
Aggregated quality score from linter diagnostics, weighted by severity.
100%
Resolution Completeness
Percentage of `$ref` references that resolve successfully.
0%
Specification Validity
Checks whether the API description parses successfully and conforms to its declared specification (e.g., OpenAPI).
100%
Structural Integrity
Structural correctness score based on schema issues using logarithmic dampening.
56
Developer Experience & Jentic Compatibility
Clarity, completeness, and ingestion readiness for developers and tooling.
Grade: CSignals: 4
0%
Example Density
How richly the API is illustrated with examples.
100%
Example Validity
Percentage of examples that conform to their schemas.
25%
Response Coverage
Percentage of operations with complete response definitions (success, client error, server error).
100%
Tooling Readiness
Health of API ingestion, bundling, and resolution within Jentic pipelines.
15
AI-Readiness & Agent Experience
Semantic breadth, depth, and agent comprehension for AI systems.
Grade: FSignals: 4
9%
Description Coverage
Coverage of descriptions across API elements.
0%
Error Standardization
Coverage of RFC 9457 Problem Details for error responses.
0%
OperationId Quality
Coverage, uniqueness, and casing consistency of operationIds for AI inference.
50%
Summary Coverage
Coverage of summaries across operations/tags/info.
94
Agent Usability
Functional utility, complexity comfort, and AI orchestration readiness.
Grade: A+Signals: 1
94%
Complexity Comfort
Agent comfort level based on API operational and structural complexity.
15
Security
Trust, risk posture, and security compliance.
Grade: FSignals: 1
15%
Authentication Strength
Average quality of security schemes based on authentication method strength (weakest link for OAuth2).
63
AI Discoverability
Findability, semantic richness, and reasoning readiness.
Grade: B-Signals: 1
62%
Descriptive Richness
Clarity and depth of descriptions across API elements.
Score it yourself
Every API in the directory is allowlisted, so you can re-score it with no key required.
npx @jentic/api-scorecard-cli score <openapi-url>Why Jentic?
What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.
Setup
Wiring the NYT Archive API by hand means appending your api-key to the query string against api.nytimes.com/svc/archive/v1 and handling the bulk-download request plumbing yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the NYT Archive API from the API Directory, store the key once, and your agent calls it.
Permission scoping
The Archive API is a single read-only monthly download with no resource id, so scope the agent to that one operation and leave everything else out. You choose the operations it may call, so it only reaches the endpoint you list.
Credential isolation
Your NYT api-key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected as the api-key query parameter at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.
Intent-based discovery
Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'list NYT articles for a given month', and Jentic returns the matching Archive operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.
Related APIs
Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.
FAQs
Specific to using NYT Archive API through Jentic.
What authentication does the NYT Archive API use?
The API uses an API key passed as a query parameter named 'api-key'. There is no header-based auth and no OAuth flow. Through Jentic, the api-key is stored encrypted in the vault and appended to every request URL at execution time so the agent never holds it directly.
How far back does the archive go?
Coverage starts in September 1851. You can request any year and month from then forward, and the response contains every article The New York Times published that month with its metadata.
What are the rate limits for the NYT Archive API?
The spec does not embed explicit limits. The Times's published policy is 5 requests per minute and 500 per day for the developer tier; back off on HTTP 429 and pace bulk-archive walks accordingly.
How do I retrieve a month of articles through Jentic?
Run pip install jentic, then search for 'list NYT articles for a given month'. Jentic returns GET /{year}/{month}.json with its input schema; supply the year and month and execute. Run it through Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer, to get an agent API key.
Does the Archive API return article body text?
No - the response includes metadata (headlines, abstracts, bylines, keywords, section, URL) rather than full body text. Use the URL field to link out to the article on nytimes.com for the full text.
Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the NYT Archive API?
Yes. Because Jentic One is self-hosted, you set the rules that decide which operations and credentials your agent may use. The NYT Archive API exposes a single read-only monthly download at GET /{year}/{month}.json with no resource id, so you can grant your agent just that one operation and leave every other capability out. You also hold the api-key in your own instance and it is injected at execution time, so the agent only reaches the exact endpoint you list.
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