Wikidata · Rate Limits

Wikidata Rate Limits

Wikidata APIs are governed by Wikimedia's shared platform limits rather than per-account quotas. Anonymous and authenticated traffic is best-effort; abusive or unidentified clients are throttled or blocked. The SPARQL Query Service enforces a hard query-execution timeout. The MediaWiki Action API uses the maxlag parameter as a courtesy throttle when replication is behind. The User-Agent policy is mandatory - requests with a generic / missing User-Agent header may be denied without further notice.

Wikidata Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Wikidata on the APIs.io network, in the API Commons Rate Limits shape.

It captures 4 rate-limit definitions, measuring seconds_per_query, concurrent_queries, replication_lag_seconds, and varies.

Limit state is signalled in the retryAfter response header, and an exhausted limit returns HTTP 429.

This profile was written by API Evangelist and has not been verified against a page the provider published; treat every limit as unconfirmed until a dated transcription replaces it.

The profile also includes 5 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled and serviceUnavailable.

Tagged areas include Knowledge Graph, Linked Data, SPARQL, Open Data, and Rate Limiting.

4 Limits Exhausted: HTTP 429 retryAfter
Method: generated, dated 2026-05-05.
Written by API Evangelist on 2026-05-05 and not verified against a page the provider published. Treat every limit as unconfirmed until a dated transcription replaces it.
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Knowledge GraphLinked DataSPARQLOpen DataRate Limiting

Limits

SPARQL Query Execution Timeout IP
seconds_per_query · second
60
query.wikidata.org enforces a 60-second hard timeout on each SPARQL query; long-running queries are cancelled.
SPARQL Concurrent Queries IP
concurrent_queries
5
Approximately five parallel queries per client IP on the public SPARQL endpoint; additional queries are queued or rejected.
MediaWiki Action API maxlag Courtesy Throttle client
replication_lag_seconds
5
Best practice is to send maxlag=5 on bot / batch traffic; the API returns 200 with a maxlag error when replication is behind, and clients should pause.
Wikimedia Global Rate Limits IP
varies
see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User-Agent_policy and per-API docs
Global per-IP and per-user throttles apply across Wikimedia APIs; specific numbers are not pinned and may change. On 429 honor Retry-After; on prolonged errors, back off and reduce concurrency.

Policies

User-Agent Policy
Every request must send a descriptive User-Agent identifying the tool and a contact URL or email. Generic / missing User-Agents are rejected.
Bulk-Use via Dumps
For full-database reads or large extracts, use Wikimedia's database dumps rather than crawling the live APIs.
maxlag Courtesy
Bots and batch clients should send maxlag=5 (or similar) on writes / heavy reads to MediaWiki Action API and pause when the API signals replication lag.
Backoff on 429 / 503
Honor Retry-After. Apply exponential backoff with jitter; reduce concurrency before retrying.
Accept-Encoding
Send Accept-Encoding gzip,deflate to reduce bandwidth on the shared infrastructure.

Sources

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