Wikisource · Rate Limits

Wikisource Rate Limits

Wikisource uses the same MediaWiki rate-limit infrastructure as all Wikimedia projects. Read operations via the Action API have no hard published per-second ceiling but are subject to fair-use enforcement — serial requests and batched titles are strongly preferred over parallel bursts. The cached REST API v1 documents a soft 200 requests/s per-client ceiling. Write operations (edits, proofread-status changes) are governed by per-user-right server limits retrievable via action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits. A contactable User-Agent is mandatory on all requests; omitting it may cause IP-level blocks without notice.

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

It captures 4 rate-limit definitions, measuring requests_per_second and varies.

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

Tagged areas include Rate Limiting, Open Knowledge, Public Domain, and Literature.

4 Limits Throttle: 429
Rate LimitingOpen KnowledgePublic DomainLiterature

Limits

REST API v1 - cached anonymous reads client
requests_per_second · second
200
Soft per-client cap on the Varnish-cached REST API v1 layer. Most requests are served from cache, so the limit primarily affects cold (uncached) paths and write-through scenarios.
Action API - read operations client
requests_per_second
serial (one in flight)
No hard speed number is published. Wikimedia expects clients to issue requests serially and to batch multiple page titles in a single call using pipe-separated values (titles=PageA|PageB|PageC) rather than issuing sequential single-item requests.
Action API - write operations account/right
varies
see action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=ratelimits
Per-user-right rate limits enforced server-side for edits, moves, uploads, and other data-modifying actions. Returns errorcode=ratelimited; retry with exponential backoff.
Action API - bot accounts account
requests_per_second
elevated (bot flag required)
Accounts with the bot flag receive higher write-rate limits. Apply through Wikisource community processes or via Wikimedia Stewards for cross-wiki bots.

Policies

Contactable User-Agent (Mandatory)
Every request must include a non-generic User-Agent header in the form "clientname/version (contact: email or URL) framework/version". Requests with browser-like or absent User-Agent strings may be blocked at IP level without warning.
Serial Requests Preferred
Issue read requests sequentially rather than in parallel. Use pipe-separated titles=A|B|C batching and list/generator queries to retrieve many items in a single round-trip instead of multiple parallel calls.
Use maxlag for Non-Interactive Jobs
Pass maxlag=5 (or a similarly conservative value) on bot or batch traffic. MediaWiki returns a maxlag-exceeded error during replication lag peaks, signalling the client to pause before retrying.
Exponential Backoff on ratelimited / 429
When the Action API returns errorcode=ratelimited or any API returns HTTP 429, apply exponential backoff with increasing delays between retries. Honour the Retry-After response header when present.
Prefer GET and Enable Compression
Use GET (cacheable) for all read operations and set Accept-Encoding: gzip to reduce payload sizes. Cache responses locally where appropriate to avoid redundant round-trips.

Sources

Work with this as data

Every rate limit here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

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Tools for rate limits

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  • find_rate_limitsBrowse and filter every rate limit in the catalog.
  • apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
  • resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
  • find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.
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