Trending Topics API & Social Media Trends API
"What's trending right now" is one of the most-searched developer-API categories, and the obvious incumbent — Google Trends — has no official free API. Here's a free live check, then two pay-per-call endpoints built on sources that actually publish reliable, official, keyless data.
Try it free — what's trending right now
Live, no signup. Pulls from Hacker News, GitHub, Mastodon, and Wikipedia and merges them into one ranked list.
Why not just use Google Trends?
Google Trends has no official free API. Its unofficial endpoints were probed live for this product on 2026-09-28 and returned HTTP 429 (rate-limited) on one and HTTP 404 (retired) on another within a single manual request each — not a reliable foundation for a paid, always-on product, and not something we'll silently proxy and call reliable.
Instead this API aggregates officially supported, keyless public endpoints that publish genuine attention/trending signal: the Wikimedia Foundation's own Pageviews REST API (which topic is getting more attention than usual, for any topic with a Wikipedia article), Hacker News' and GitHub's own search/trending APIs, and Mastodon's own public trending-topics endpoints. That's a narrower slice of the internet than "all of social media," stated honestly — not a claim to have solved Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/Facebook trending, none of which currently publish a free official API either.
Two routes, two shapes of "trending"
| Route | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
Social Trends PulsePOST /v1/social_trends_pulse | $0.015 | Broadest single call — merges 5 live sources, dedupes cross-platform topics, cheapest per call. The free check above is this route, capped. |
Wiki Trends PulsePOST /v1/wiki_trends_pulse | $0.02 | Deeper single-topic read — daily pageview time series and trend stats (pct_change, direction) for one specific topic, or today's Wikipedia breakout list. |
Free before paying either one: /v1/social_trends_pulse/availability + .../example, and /v1/wiki_trends_pulse/availability + .../example.
Same feed, no cap
This free page calls the identical live builder used by the paid API — up to 20 merged topics per call, plus the full per-source breakdown and cross-source ranking.
Trending topics with no daily cap — $0.015/call (social_trends_pulse) or $0.02/call (wiki_trends_pulse), USDC on Base, no account → Prefer card billing? Subscribe on the RapidAPI Web Intelligence API → MCP tools — call social_trends_pulse or wiki_trends_pulse from any MCP-enabled agent →Example (x402 pay-per-call)
curl -X POST https://draconic21-x402-api.onrender.com/v1/social_trends_pulse \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"limit":10}'
# unpaid: HTTP 402 + PAYMENT-REQUIRED header (sign with a Base USDC wallet, retry)
Agent / funded runtime? After you verify this feed, the cold-start buy on this origin is POST /v1/signal_latest — $0.03 USDC (Daily Agent Signal). Free wake: GET /health. Skill card: /skill.md · buyer loop: /agent-buy.md.
Independent public-data helper. This page and its linked API aggregate public, live third-party data (Hacker News, GitHub, Mastodon, Wikimedia) — it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or an official product of any of those platforms, and it is not Google Trends. "Trending" here means what these four specific public sources show right now, not a claim about the whole internet or any single social network. Not financial, market, or investment advice.