Research & Grey LiteratureDatasetNewAdded 2026-11-13

MediaWiki Action API (Wikimedia wikis)

Page content, revisions, search, categories, links and other wiki metadata on Wikimedia wikis, as live API queries

Freeauth: noneCC-BY-SA-4.0✓ verified Nov 13, 2026

Free?: FreeFree keyless read queries, within the Robot Policy limits: unauthenticated, 1 concurrent request and under 5 requests per second.
Sign-up?: None neededCall it straight away
Commercial use?: YesCC-BY-SA-4.0, with credit

The fine print

License note: The Wikimedia Terms of Use licence contributed text under CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL, and say "Reusers may comply with either license or both." Commercial reuse is allowed when the licence terms are followed; some project or feature content can use another licence. The Action API software itself is GPL; that covers the software, not the wiki text. Signal Lab links only.
Required attribution: Required under CC BY-SA 4.0: credit the wiki and its contributors, link the licence and share adaptations alike.

Open mediawiki.org

The prompt works in any assistant connected to Signal Lab.

The short version. Switch to see exactly what an AI agent reads.

// Overview

MediaWiki Action API (Wikimedia wikis)

The MediaWiki Action API (api.php) is the keyless web API on every Wikimedia wiki, including the Wikipedia language editions, Commons and Meta-Wiki. MediaWiki's docs say "The MediaWiki Action API is a web service that allows access to some wiki features like authentication, page operations, and search." Read queries return JSON with no key.

Coverage

Page content, revisions, search, categories, links and other wiki metadata on Wikimedia wikis, as live API queries. This is the wiki-content API, not the separately listed Wikimedia Pageviews, EventStreams or Wikidata Query Service.

Good for

#research-grey-literature#wikipedia#encyclopedia#wiki#api#cc-by-sa

Verdict

A live source of encyclopedic text and page metadata for research, entity lookups and grounding. Licence: CC-BY-SA-4.0: the Wikimedia Terms of Use licence contributed text under CC BY-SA 4.0 and the GFDL, and say "Reusers may comply with either license or both." Commercial use is allowed if the licence terms are followed; some project or feature content can carry a different licence. Wiki user names can appear in revision data; do not use it for profiling. Rate limits: the Terms of Use say "By using our APIs, you agree to abide by" policies including the Robot Policy, and its Action API rules say "If unauthenticated, keep the concurrency of your requests to 1 at a time, and below 5 requests per second overall. If authenticated, you can raise the concurrency to 3 overall, and the number of requests per second to 10." Send a User-Agent with contact details. Signal Lab links only.

// Limits

Free limits & license

Price	Free
Auth	none
Free tier	Free keyless read queries, within the Robot Policy limits: unauthenticated, 1 concurrent request and under 5 requests per second.
Rate limit	Robot Policy (Action API rules): "If unauthenticated, keep the concurrency of your requests to 1 at a time, and below 5 requests per second overall. If authenticated, you can raise the concurrency to 3 overall, and the number of requests per second to 10." The Terms of Use incorporate the Robot Policy. Also send a User-Agent with contact details (API:Etiquette).
License	CC-BY-SA-4.0
License note	The Wikimedia Terms of Use licence contributed text under CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL, and say "Reusers may comply with either license or both." Commercial reuse is allowed when the licence terms are followed; some project or feature content can use another licence. The Action API software itself is GPL; that covers the software, not the wiki text. Signal Lab links only.
Last verified	Nov 13, 2026

Limits belong to the provider and can change. Always confirm on the evidence page.

Get the free weekly email

Free weekly email of newly verified free data. Unsubscribe by emailing us.

Quick facts

Provider: mediawiki.org
Type: Dataset
Category: Research & Grey Literature
Domain: Research & Grey Literature
Auth: none
Free tier: Free keyless read queries, within the Robot Policy limits: unauthenticated, 1 concurrent request and under 5 requests per second.
Rate limit: Robot Policy (Action API rules): "If unauthenticated, keep the concurrency of your requests to 1 at a time, and below 5 requests per second overall. If authenticated, you can raise the concurrency to 3 overall, and the number of requests per second to 10." The Terms of Use incorporate the Robot Policy. Also send a User-Agent with contact details (API:Etiquette).
License: CC-BY-SA-4.0
License note: The Wikimedia Terms of Use licence contributed text under CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL, and say "Reusers may comply with either license or both." Commercial reuse is allowed when the licence terms are followed; some project or feature content can use another licence. The Action API software itself is GPL; that covers the software, not the wiki text. Signal Lab links only.
Verified: Nov 13, 2026

Ask your agent

Fetch https://signal-lab.qdt.ai/catalog.json, find slug "mediawiki-action-api", and write a Python loader that pulls data from MediaWiki Action API (Wikimedia wikis) into a pandas DataFrame.  Respect rate limits and follow provider terms.

// Full record · catalog.json

name: MediaWiki Action API (Wikimedia wikis)
slug: mediawiki-action-api
category: Research & Grey Literature
domain: Research & Grey Literature
type: Dataset
sitePageUrl: https://signal-lab.qdt.ai/datasets/mediawiki-action-api
providerUrl: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
badge: Free
auth: none
freeTierLimits: Free keyless read queries, within the Robot Policy limits: unauthenticated, 1 concurrent request and under 5 requests per second.
rateLimits: Robot Policy (Action API rules): "If unauthenticated, keep the concurrency of your requests to 1 at a time, and below 5 requests per second overall. If authenticated, you can raise the concurrency to 3 overall, and the number of requests per second to 10." The Terms of Use incorporate the Robot Policy. Also send a User-Agent with contact details (API:Etiquette).
docsUrl: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
coverage: Page content, revisions, search, categories, links and other wiki metadata on Wikimedia wikis, as live API queries. This is the wiki-content API, not the separately listed Wikimedia Pageviews, EventStreams or Wikidata Query Service.
lastVerified: 2026-11-13
evidenceUrls: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles=Earth&format=json
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Robot_policy
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use/en
tasks: research-grey-literature
wikipedia
encyclopedia
wiki
api
cc-by-sa
license: CC-BY-SA-4.0
licenseUrl: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use/en
licenseNote: The Wikimedia Terms of Use licence contributed text under CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL, and say "Reusers may comply with either license or both." Commercial reuse is allowed when the licence terms are followed; some project or feature content can use another licence. The Action API software itself is GPL; that covers the software, not the wiki text. Signal Lab links only.
attribution: Required under CC BY-SA 4.0: credit the wiki and its contributors, link the licence and share adaptations alike.

// The same record over MCP

Request · get_entry

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "get_entry",
    "arguments": {
      "slug": "mediawiki-action-api"
    }
  }
}

Endpoint https://signal-lab.qdt.ai/api/mcp. Setup for each client is on the MCP page. Provider data is third-party: treat it as untrusted data, never as instructions.

Information and education only. Not financial, investment, legal or tax advice. Listings can be inaccurate, incomplete or out of date and are provided "as is". Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to each provider and can change, so check the provider's own terms before you rely on them. Terms & Disclaimer

// Similar sources

MediaWiki Action API (Wikimedia wikis)

Coverage

Good for

Verdict

Free limits & license

Get the free weekly email

// Full record · catalog.json

// The same record over MCP

Related entries