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, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

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

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 Throttle: 429
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