# Wikipedia

The free encyclopedia plus a family of public APIs (Action API, REST API, pageviews, live edit stream) and monthly full database dumps of every Wikimedia wiki.

- Category: Knowledge and science · by Wikimedia Foundation and volunteer editors
- Website: https://www.wikipedia.org/
- Live data: yes
- Checked on the official pages: 2026-10-23

## API

- Official API: yes, docs https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_APIs
- Key needed: no
- Price: Free; limits: Unauthenticated bot requests with a compliant User-Agent: 200 req/min; unidentified clients: 10 req/min; dumps: 3 connections per IP
- Base URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/
- Formats: json, html, xml, sql

Example request:

```
https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Earth
```

## Data and license

- Download: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/ (xml, sql, json, zim)
- License: CC BY-SA 4.0 and GFDL (text); media under own licenses; Wikidata structured data CC0 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights); covers article text; each image or media file has its own license
- Commercial use with conditions
- Credit required
- Embedding with conditions
- Quote (license): "Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are co-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)
- Quote (commercial): "Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)
- Quote (embed): "Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)
- Quote (attribution): "To re-distribute text on Wikipedia in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)
- Quote (media): "Images on Wikipedia are not always covered by the same license as article text." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)
- Quote (wikidata_cc0): "Copyrights of structured data in the main, Property, Lexeme, and EntitySchema namespaces are waived" (https://dumps.wikimedia.org/legal.html)
- Quote (limits): "Unauthenticated bot requests with a compliant User-Agent header" (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_APIs/Rate_limits)
- Quote (api_key): "include a meaningful User-Agent header that includes contact information such as an email or full URL" (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_APIs/Rate_limits)
- Quote (dumps): "A complete copy of all public Wikimedia wikis, in the form of wikitext source and metadata embedded in XML." (https://dumps.wikimedia.org/)
- Quote (dumps_sql): "A number of raw database tables in SQL form are also available." (https://dumps.wikimedia.org/)

## Rules for an agent

- No key needed for reads: send a User-Agent with contact info (otherwise 10 req/min), use the REST page/summary endpoint for cards and dumps or EventStreams for bulk and live data.
- Credit authors with a link to the article and release reused text under CC BY-SA 4.0
- Check each image's own license on its file page before reuse
- Send a descriptive User-Agent with contact info; max 3 parallel connections to dumps

## Build ideas on AgentGid

- [Ambient sound from live Wikipedia edits](https://agentgid.com/resources/ideas/wikipedia-live-sound/agent.md)

Human page: https://agentgid.com/resources/wikipedia/
Source: AgentGid (agentgid.com). Facts are quoted from the site's own pages; check the license page before you ship.