Twingly
Twingly is a Swedish API-first data infrastructure company delivering real-time structured data from news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and VK platforms. Founded in 2006, it serves enterprise media monitoring, compliance, PR, and cybersecurity firms in 30+ countries.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2006
- HeadquartersLinköping, Sweden
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Twingly does
Twingly AB is a Swedish API-first data infrastructure company founded in 2006 and headquartered in Linköping, Sweden. The company provides real-time, structured data from online sources — including news sites, blogs, forums, review platforms, the dark web, and the Russian social network VK — delivered to enterprise customers via REST APIs. It serves clients in over 30 countries, with named enterprise customers including Fractal, Netbase Quid, Notified, and Retriever Group, primarily operating in the media intelligence, PR, compliance, and cybersecurity sectors.
Twingly operates six distinct API products: News API (3M+ articles per day from 170,000 active sources in 100+ countries, with 8-minute average latency), Blogs API (1M+ posts per day from 3M+ active blogs), Forums API (10M+ posts per day from 9,000+ forums with automatic 3-year backfill), Reviews API (60M+ reviews per month from 85 languages), Dark Web API (18M+ posts per month from Tor, pastebins, Discord, Telegram, marketplaces, and free-speech platforms), and VK API (20M+ messages per day). Underlying capabilities include IPTC Media Topics-based classification (1,200+ topics), entity extraction with Wikidata IDs, language detection across 56-100+ languages, semantic search, and proprietary readership-metrics estimation on blog sources.
The commercial model is API-license-based with a freemium entry point — trial customers receive 100 free requests per API, after which paying customers operate on custom-tailored monthly usage quotas. There is no public pricing; enterprise contracts are handled via direct sales ([email protected]). Distribution is direct only — through app.twingly.com self-service registration, with custom source additions available for an additional fee. The company has remained privately held and bootstrapped except for a single seed round of approximately $1.35M in July 2007, indicating 19 years of organic operation funded internally.
Twingly firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Twingly
- Legal name
- Twingly AB
- Website
- https://twingly.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2006
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Twingly is a Swedish API-first data infrastructure company delivering real-time structured data from news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and VK platforms. Founded in 2006, it serves enterprise media monitoring, compliance, PR, and cybersecurity firms in 30+ countries.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Twingly industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Media Intelligence APIs
- NAICS
- Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210), Web Search Portals and All Other Information Services (519290)
- SIC
- Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Processing & Data Preparation (7374)
- akta.pro primary industry
- RSS/Feed Readers & Subscription Aggregators (MPACAKAD)
- akta.pro secondary industry
- Audience Segmentation, Demographic & Identity Graph Services (MPABAOAH)
Keywords
Where Twingly is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Linköping
- HQ country
- Sweden
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Twingly business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- API Access Licenses (Paid): APIs are offered under paid commercial licenses. Trial customers receive 100 free requests; paying customers have usage quotas tailored to their needs. Terms of use explicitly state 'APIs with paid licenses for commercial use.' The revenue model is consumption/tier-based with customized quotas for enterprise customers.
- API Access Licenses (Trial/Freemium): Free trial with 100 requests per API. Used as a lead-generation and evaluation mechanism to convert users to paid commercial licenses.
- Custom Source Addition (Fee-Based): Adding new sources (news sites, forums, review sites, dark web sources) requires manual work and comes with a small fee, charged on top of standard API access.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Trial - Free access with 100 requests per API |
| Subscription | Monthly | Paid Plans - Custom quotas for commercial use |
Go-to-market motion2 records
Distribution channels3 records
Marketing channels6 records
Twingly product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Twingly provides real-time data collection and indexing APIs delivering structured data from millions of online sources across news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and Russian social media (VK). Customers access the data via REST APIs with JSON or XML responses for media monitoring, competitive intelligence, compliance screening, and brand protection use cases. The platform supports 56–100+ languages, maintains an 8-minute average latency for news content, and offers unique readership metrics, entity extraction, and topic classification on indexed content.
Product overview
Twingly is a media intelligence data provider offering a portfolio of specialized APIs for accessing real-time and historical data from news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and Russian social media. The product lineup consists of six distinct API products: News API (3M+ daily articles with entity extraction and readership metrics), Blogs API (1M+ daily posts from 3M+ blogs), Forums API (10M+ daily posts from 9,000+ forums), Reviews API (60M+ monthly reviews), Dark Web API (18M+ monthly dark web documents), and VK API (20M+ daily Russian social posts). All APIs share common features including multi-language support, filtering capabilities, JSON/XML data formats, and access via the app.twingly.com developer portal. Twingly positions itself as infrastructure for media monitoring, competitive intelligence, and compliance applications, delivering data with minimal latency (8 minutes average for news) to clients in over 30 countries.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- News API Real-time news data API delivering over 3 million articles per day from 170,000 active news sources across 180 countries with 8-minute average latency. Includes IPTC Media Topics-based classification, entity extraction with Wikidata IDs, language detection across 76 languages, and unique readership metrics estimation. Built for media monitoring companies, financial institutions, compliance teams, and PR firms.
- Blogs API Blog data API indexing 1 million blog posts per day from over 3 million active blogs worldwide, adding 3,000+ new blogs daily. Supports 56 languages with Blog Search API and Blog LiveFeed API (real-time firehose), including Blog Rank for influencer identification. Designed for media monitoring, PR, and market research teams.
- Forums API Forum discussion monitoring API providing 10 million forum posts per day from over 9,000 forums globally. Supports 85 languages with filtering by keywords, language, country, forums, and time periods, and adds historical posts up to 3 years old when a new forum is indexed. Built for PR, brand monitoring, and competitive intelligence teams.
- Reviews API Customer review monitoring API accessing over 60 million reviews per month from major product and service websites worldwide. Supports 85 languages with filtering by keywords, ratings, language, country, and domains, enabling tracking of specific products, services, and competitor reviews. Built for consumer brands, market research firms, and competitive intelligence teams.
- Dark Web API Dark web monitoring API providing over 18 million posts, articles, and documents per month from Tor network, pastebins, Discord, Telegram, marketplaces, forums, networks, and free speech platforms. Supports 100+ languages with 12 months of history and filtering by category, network, file type, and author. Built for cybersecurity firms, MSSPs, and corporate security teams.
- VK API Russian social media API providing access to all public posts, shares, and comments from VK (VKontakte), Russia's most popular social platform with 95+ million active users. Delivers 20 million messages per day with author IDs, profile URLs, and photo/video metadata. Built for media monitoring, brand intelligence, and regional market research teams.
Quantifiable outcome
- 8-minute average latency from news article publication to API availability
- +7 more outcomes
Companies that use Twingly
Customer profileNamed customers4 records
Segments6 records
Ideal customer profiles6 records
Twingly technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
AI capability8 records
Feature8 records
Twingly partnerships and signals
Strategic signalScale indicators8 records
Recent moves5 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Twingly competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Meltwater: Global media intelligence and social listening platform that combines news/media monitoring with broader PR and communications analytics. A larger incumbent operating in the same customer use cases Twingly serves, though as part of a much wider product suite.
- Dataminr: Real-time event and risk detection platform ingesting global news and social signals. Comparable real-time/low-latency architecture and enterprise customer overlap with Twingly's compliance and PR segments.
- LexisNexis (Nexis): Large-scale news, business, and risk information provider with extensive global coverage. Comparable in serving compliance, risk, and media monitoring use cases, with deeper historical archives.
- Cision (Brandwatch): Major PR, media monitoring, and social listening vendor serving enterprise communications teams. Overlaps with Twingly's media monitoring customer base and offers bundled data, analytics, and distribution capabilities.
- Talkwalker: Enterprise consumer intelligence and social listening platform with extensive social and news coverage. Comparable to Twingly's media monitoring breadth, with stronger presence in brand and consumer analytics.
Direct peers
- Mediatoolkit: Real-time media monitoring platform covering news, blogs, forums, and social channels. Comparable mid-market positioning and use case focus to Twingly's customer base.
- AYLIEN: News API provider focused on enriched, NLP-tagged news data with entity extraction and sentiment analysis — directly comparable to Twingly's News API with topics, entities, and readership metrics.
- NewsAPI.org: Direct news API competitor offering headlines and articles from global sources via REST endpoints. Closely comparable developer-facing product to Twingly's News API, though narrower in source type breadth.
- Mention: Real-time media monitoring tool tracking mentions across web, social, news, and forums. Direct peer for SMB and mid-market media monitoring use cases Twingly supports via its APIs.
- Webhose.io: Web data and news API provider offering structured access to news, blogs, forums, and reviews. Closely aligned API-first model and multi-source coverage to Twingly's portfolio.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Twingly social profiles
Digital presenceTwingly financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Twingly leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles4 records
Twingly funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds1 record
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Twingly M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Twingly
What does Twingly do?
Twingly provides real-time data collection and indexing APIs delivering structured data from millions of online sources across news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and Russian social media (VK). Customers access the data via REST APIs with JSON or XML responses for media monitoring, competitive intelligence, compliance screening, and brand protection use cases. The platform supports 56–100+ languages, maintains an 8-minute average latency for news content, and offers unique readership metrics, entity extraction, and topic classification on indexed content.
Is Twingly a public or private company?
Twingly is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Twingly founded?
Twingly was founded in 2006. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Twingly based?
Twingly is headquartered in Linköping, Sweden, in the Europe region.
How does Twingly make money?
Three revenue lines are on record. API Access Licenses (Paid) is the primary driver. The others are API Access Licenses (Trial/Freemium) and custom Source Addition (Fee-Based).
Who are Twingly's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Meltwater, Dataminr, LexisNexis (Nexis), Cision (Brandwatch) and Talkwalker. Direct peers are Mediatoolkit, AYLIEN, NewsAPI.org, Mention and Webhose.io.
Does Twingly have an API?
Yes. Twingly offers a suite of APIs for accessing media monitoring data from news, blogs, forums, reviews, dark web, and VK social platform. APIs available: (1) Blogs API - Blog Search API (GET requests, JSON/XML responses) and Blog LiveFeed API; (2) News API - News Search API (POST requests with JSON bodies, JSON responses) and News LiveFeed API (GET requests, JSON); (3) Forums API - Forum Search API (POST requests, JSON); (4) Reviews API - Review Search API (POST requests, JSON); (5) Dark Web API - Dark Web Search API (POST requests, JSON); (6) VK API - VK Search API (POST requests, JSON). Authentication via API key obtained at app.twingly.com. Rate limits: News Search API 5 req/sec, News LiveFeed API 10 req/sec, Dark Web Search API 1 req/sec, Blog/Forum/Review APIs no rate limit. Trial customers get 100 free requests. All APIs support filtering on keywords, languages, countries, time periods, and other parameters. Sandbox/testing environment available at app.twingly.com. Developer documentation is at app.twingly.com/register.
What industry is Twingly in?
Twingly's product category is Media Intelligence APIs. Its primary akta.pro industry code is MPACAKAD, RSS/Feed Readers & Subscription Aggregators, with a secondary code of MPABAOAH, Audience Segmentation, Demographic & Identity Graph Services. Its NAICS code is 518210 and its SIC code is 7370.