Bing News Search API Is Retired — Here's What Replaced It (and When to Pick Something Else)

If you're here, you either got the deprecation email eight months ago and stalled, or a deploy just returned 401 Resource not found from https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/news/search and you're searching for what to do next. Both starting points lead to the same two-sentence answer and the same choice.

Disclosure. APITube publishes this blog. APITube is one of the REST news APIs mentioned below. Every Bing-related fact in this article links to Microsoft's official retirement notice or archived docs page.

TL;DR — what replaced the Bing News Search API

The Bing News Search API was retired on August 11, 2025 per the Microsoft lifecycle announcement. Microsoft's official replacement is Grounding with Bing Search in Azure AI Foundry, a preview product billed per-tool-call that only works inside Azure AI Agent Service. Most teams that did not already live on Azure are migrating to a plain REST news API (APITube, NewsData.io, Perigon, GNews) instead, because they avoid the Azure lock-in and the 40–483% cost jump reported by third parties.

One-line recommendation for two reader segments:

• You already run on Azure AI Agent Service and use news inside an agent tool call → Grounding with Bing Search is the simplest path.
• Everyone else → migrate to a REST news API. Faster, cheaper, and portable across agent frameworks.

The retirement — quoting Microsoft

Microsoft's lifecycle notice, published in 2024 and in effect since August 11, 2025, retired the entire Bing Search API family: Web, Image, Video, Entity, Custom, Spellcheck, Visual, and — the one this article is about — News. Both the free F0/F1 tiers and the paid S1–S9 tiers were decommissioned on the same date. There is no extended support.

The former overview page for Bing News Search now lives on learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/... and carries its own footprint that is about as unambiguous as documentation gets. The frontmatter reads:

is_archived: true
is_retired: true
learn_archive: manual
ROBOTS: NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW

A docs page that explicitly tells search engines to ignore it is a docs page that isn't coming back. If your codebase still has a bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/news/search URL in it, that URL returns an error today.

Migrating the same query three ways

Here is a single logical request — "top English-language news for the query openai" — expressed against the retired API, the Microsoft-recommended replacement, and a plain REST news API.

Before — old Bing News Search API (retired, do not use)

curl "https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/news/search?q=openai&mkt=en-US&count=10" \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $BING_KEY"

This is the call that no longer works. The Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header was the canonical auth pattern across the whole Bing Search family.

Replacement 1 — Grounding with Bing Search via Azure AI Agent Service

Grounding with Bing Search is not a drop-in REST replacement. It's a tool you attach to an Azure AI Agent, which the agent may or may not choose to call during a user turn. You do not query it like an HTTP endpoint.

# Python, using Azure AI Agent Service (simplified)
from azure.ai.agents import AgentClient
from azure.ai.agents.tools import BingGroundingTool

client = AgentClient(endpoint=AZURE_FOUNDRY_ENDPOINT, credential=cred)

# 1) Attach Grounding-with-Bing as a tool to a new agent
bing_tool = BingGroundingTool(connection_id=BING_CONNECTION_ID)
agent = client.create_agent(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    name="news-agent",
    tools=[bing_tool],
    instructions="Use Bing grounding to answer news questions.",
)

# 2) Ask a user question — the agent decides to call Bing
thread = client.create_thread()
client.create_message(thread.id, role="user", content="What's new with OpenAI?")
run = client.create_and_run(thread.id, agent.id)

You pay per tool invocation, not per logical news query. You cannot call it from a lambda, an Edge function, or any environment outside Azure AI Agent Service. Structural snippet; see Microsoft's Grounding with Bing Search docs for current signatures (preview SDKs change frequently).

Replacement 2 — plain REST news API (APITube example)

curl "https://api.apitube.io/v1/news/everything?title=openai&language.code=en&per_page=10" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $APITUBE_KEY"

Schema changes: ?q= → title=, mkt=en-US → language.code=en, count=10 → per_page=10, subscription header → X-API-Key. The response includes sentiment and entities per article, which the old Bing News did not. NewsData.io and Perigon share the same REST-with-header shape.

The diff between Bing's retired URL and APITube's is shorter than the diff between Bing's URL and the Grounding-with-Bing agent code. For teams not building AI agents, Replacement 2 is strictly simpler.

Feature parity: old Bing News vs Grounding with Bing vs REST APIs

The Grounding with Bing Search column is honest about a central point most migration blogs bury: it is not a news API. It is a tool an agent uses. If your existing code path is "fetch news → render list," you can't wire that to Grounding with Bing without restructuring around an agent loop.

Is it really 40-483% more expensive?

The "40-483% more expensive" claim comes from ppc.land comparing old Bing Search API tiers to Grounding with Bing Search's transactional pricing. The range is that wide because it depends on which old tier you were on and how many tool calls your new agent makes per user turn.

Worked example at 100,000 news queries per month, approximate Apr 2026 public pricing:

The math is directional — Grounding-with-Bing pricing is still in preview and moves — but the direction is consistent with the ppc.land estimate. A team on the old S1 tier paying ~$140/mo who migrates to the default Microsoft path will typically see their news-retrieval line at least double. A team migrating to a REST news API usually holds flat or saves money, and picks up sentiment and entities as a side effect.

When Grounding with Bing is still the right answer

The honest pro-Microsoft case. Pick Grounding with Bing Search if all three of the following are true:

• You already run on Azure AI Agent Service for other reasons — you have an Azure enterprise agreement, existing AgentClient code, and integrated billing with your other Azure AI services.
• News retrieval only happens inside an agent turn, not on a cron job, a scheduled backend task, or a user-facing feed. Every news call is a consequence of an agent deciding to call a tool.
• You don't need article-level structure (a list to render, specific fields to filter on) — you just need the LLM to ground its answer with what Bing found. The tool_calls[].output shape is fine.

If any one of those is false, the integration cost of bending your app into the agent tool-call model is larger than the cost of swapping to a plain REST news API. Most teams that built on the old Bing News Search fit the second case — they use news outside an agent loop.

What happens next (2026-2027)

Three shifts are worth factoring into the decision now, not at the next deprecation:

1. Grounding with Bing Search moves from preview toward general availability. Preview pricing usually converges upward when products firm up, not downward. Teams that commit before GA lock in an evolving price floor; teams that leave for a REST news API pay the migration cost once and avoid the next price change.

2. Azure AI Agent Service itself is still changing names and surfaces. It has rebranded multiple times (AI Foundry and adjacent Agent Service variants), and the tool-definition APIs shift accordingly. A news-retrieval dependency bound to that surface inherits the churn.

3. Non-Microsoft agent frameworks are catching up. Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, Mastra, and CrewAI all accept any REST endpoint as a tool. Unlike Grounding-with-Bing, which is Azure-only and agent-only, a REST news API is portable across every framework you might adopt — which means the agent case that used to justify staying on Microsoft is itself getting weaker.

The reframe: the retirement was a one-time forcing function. The two-year window after it rewards teams that picked a news source they can reuse across any framework.

Frequently asked questions

When was the Bing News API discontinued?

The Bing News Search API was discontinued on August 11, 2025, per Microsoft's official lifecycle announcement. The retirement covered the entire Bing Search family, including Web, Image, Video, Entity, Custom, and News variants, across both the free F1 tier and the paid S1 through S9 tiers.

What replaced the Bing Search API?

Microsoft's official replacement for the Bing Search API is Grounding with Bing Search inside Azure AI Foundry, a tool designed for LLM grounding within Azure AI Agent Service. Most teams without existing Azure investment migrate instead to a plain REST news API (APITube, NewsData.io, Perigon) because the replacement is Azure-locked, agent-only, and billed per tool call.

Is Grounding with Bing Search the same as the old Bing API?

No, Grounding with Bing Search is not the same as the old Bing API. The old API was a direct REST endpoint you called over HTTP with a subscription key and got a JSON list of results. Grounding with Bing Search is a tool attached to an Azure AI Agent that the agent may call during a user turn; there is no general-purpose REST endpoint you can call from outside Azure.

How much does Grounding with Bing Search cost?

Grounding with Bing Search is billed per tool call inside Azure AI Agent Service, with preview pricing that is not yet stable. Independent estimates put the replacement cost at 40–483% higher than the old Bing Search API tiers for equivalent query volumes, because each agent turn may invoke the tool multiple times and each invocation is priced separately from the model.

What is the best Bing News API alternative?

The best Bing News Search API alternative depends on your architecture: Grounding with Bing Search if you already live on Azure AI Agent Service and use news only inside agent turns, or a plain REST news API (APITube, NewsData.io, Perigon) if you call news outside an agent loop or want to stay portable across runtimes. For most teams that built on the old v7.0 endpoint, the REST migration is both cheaper and simpler.

Verdict

The Bing News Search API retirement is a forcing function that revealed how many teams were on Microsoft's news product for convenience rather than fit. If your convenience argument still holds — you live on Azure AI Agent Service and news lives inside an agent turn — stay on Microsoft. If it doesn't, a plain REST news API is simpler to migrate to, cheaper to run, portable across frameworks, and bundles sentiment and entities that the old Bing News Search never shipped.

APITube is one of those REST news APIs. Free tier 30 req / 30 min, commercial use allowed, sentiment and entities on every article. apitube.io

Related reading: NewsAPI.org vs APITube: migration in an afternoon · Microsoft Bing Search API retirement notice · Grounding with Bing Search docs

Resources

• APITube — apitube.io — try it free, sentiment and entities included on every article
• Documentation — docs.apitube.io — endpoints, parameters, response structure, integrations
• Pricing — apitube.io/pricing — all tiers
• Related — NewsAPI.org vs APITube · 10 News API Filter Patterns · News API Quick Start