Wikipedia / MediaWiki · Rate Limits

Wikipedia Rate Limits

Wikimedia projects have no hard published per-second number for the Action API or REST APIs, but publish a clear etiquette: serial (not parallel) requests, a contactable User-Agent header, use of maxlag for non-interactive jobs, and exponential backoff on the ratelimited error code. The cached REST API v1 documents a soft 200 requests/s ceiling per client. The Wikidata SPARQL endpoint enforces 60s per query and 5 concurrent queries per IP. Wikimedia Enterprise applies per-account QPS and throughput limits with the actual numbers documented per-plan.

Wikipedia Rate Limits is the machine-readable rate-limit profile for Wikipedia / MediaWiki on the APIs.io network, conforming to the API Commons Rate Limits specification.

It captures 9 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_second, varies, seconds, concurrent_requests, and requests_per_month.

The profile also includes 6 backoff/retry policies defined and response codes documented for throttled, rateLimited, serverBusy, and queryTimeout.

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Open Knowledge, Encyclopedia, Knowledge Graph, and Enterprise.

9 Limits Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingOpen KnowledgeEncyclopediaKnowledge GraphEnterprise

Limits

REST API v1 - cached anonymous reads client
requests_per_second · second
200
Soft per-client cap documented in the REST API v1 OpenAPI description. Heavily Varnish-cached so the limit applies primarily to cold paths.
Action API - read operations client
requests_per_second
serial (one in flight)
No hard speed limit; Wikimedia explicitly asks clients to issue requests serially rather than in parallel. Use generators and pipe-separated batches to reduce round-trips.
Action API - write operations account/right
varies
see action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits
Per-user-right rate limits enforced server-side. Returns `ratelimited` error code; retry with exponential backoff and increased delays.
Wikidata SPARQL - query execution time client/query
seconds · second
60
Queries exceeding 60s wall-clock are killed and return 503.
Wikidata SPARQL - concurrent queries IP
concurrent_requests
5
Per-IP concurrency cap on query.wikidata.org.
Wikimedia Enterprise Free - Snapshot account
requests_per_month · month
15
Free developer plan ceiling. Bumped to unlimited on paid plans.
Wikimedia Enterprise Free - Snapshot chunks account
chunks_per_month · month
1500
Free developer plan ceiling.
Wikimedia Enterprise Free - On-demand account
requests_per_month · month
5000
Free developer plan ceiling. Bumped to unlimited on paid plans.
Wikimedia Enterprise Paid - QPS account
requests_per_second
plan-specific
All accounts face QPS and throughput limits; the exact numbers depend on the negotiated paid plan.

Policies

Contactable User-Agent
Every request must include a meaningful User-Agent header of the form "clientname/version (contact: email or URL) framework/version". Requests without an identifiable User-Agent may be blocked at any time without warning.
Use maxlag for non-interactive jobs
Pass maxlag=5 (or similar) on bot / batch traffic so MediaWiki returns 'maxlag exceeded' rather than running during replication backlog. Treat the maxlag response as a signal to pause for several seconds.
Serial requests preferred
Issue read requests one at a time. Batch multiple titles into a single call using the pipe character (titles=A|B|C) and use list/generator queries to avoid sequential calls.
Exponential backoff on ratelimited
When the Action API returns errorcode=ratelimited or the REST APIs return HTTP 429, retry with exponential backoff and longer delays between attempts. Honour Retry-After if present.
Cache and prefer GET
Prefer GET (cacheable) over POST for read operations. Cache responses locally and honour smaxage/maxage parameters. Send Accept-Encoding: gzip.
SPARQL graph split for heavy workloads
For Wikidata SPARQL workloads, use the scholarly / non-scholarly endpoint split (query-scholarly.wikidata.org, query-main.wikidata.org) to avoid contention on the full query.wikidata.org endpoint.

Sources

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