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, in the API Commons Rate Limits shape.

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

Limit state is signalled in the retryAfter, rateLimitRemaining, and rateLimitReset response headers, 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 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 Exhausted: HTTP 429 retryAfterrateLimitRemainingrateLimitReset
Method: generated, dated 2026-05-29.
Written by API Evangelist on 2026-05-29 and not verified against a page the provider published. Treat every limit as unconfirmed until a dated transcription replaces it.
View Source
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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