Getting Started

Welcome to the Wikimedia Enterprise API Documentation and Reference Guide. Wikimedia Enterprise provides a suite of APIs designed for high-volume read-only access to Wikipedia and other supported Wikimedia projects. These APIs have been developed and are maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. All endpoints return data in a consistent schema, so you can combine articles from Snapshot, On-demand, or Realtime without creating separate parsers. Our Snapshot and Realtime: Batch download endpoints return tar.gz files and an NDJSON header. All other API endpoints return JSON by default.

Two kinds of documentation live here: the guides in the sidebar cover concepts, workflows, and decision guidance, while the API reference documents every endpoint and response field. Read our Data Primer to understand how data from Wikimedia projects is created and maintained.

Which API fits?

• Bulk data for a whole project: the Snapshot API downloads every article in a project as one compressed NDJSON file.
• The current live version of specific articles: the On-demand API returns individual articles by name, as they stand right now.
• Updates pushed to you as they happen: the Realtime API streams every change (firehose) or delivers hourly batch files. Paid plans only.
• Parsed, machine-readable JSON instead of raw HTML/wikitext: the beta Structured Contents endpoints provide pre-parsed JSON output for On-demand and Snapshot payloads.

Whichever API you pick, every payload includes Credibility Signals for judging content trust; the tuning guide shows how to put them to work.

To weigh quota, format, and freshness trade-offs across these options, see Choose the right API for the job in Best Practices. For the product-level view (free and paid accounts, feature comparison), see the API overview.

First step: sign up

To get started, sign up for a free account (no credit card required), verify your email, then follow the next steps on this page.

Getting your API keys

curl -L https://auth.enterprise.wikimedia.com/v1/login -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username":"yourusername", "password":"secret"}'

Example API calls

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN" -L https://api.enterprise.wikimedia.com/v2/projects

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN" -L https://api.enterprise.wikimedia.com/v2/snapshots/enwiki_namespace_0/download --output enwiki.tar.gz

Uncompress the tar.gz file to get an NDJSON file with each line representing a single article in the project. An example of an article's payload can be seen on our API page, and to learn more about each field in the payload, see the article model in the API reference.

Next, try calling the On-demand API to get a single article (page) of interest. Let's use NASA in English Wikipedia as an example, with this cURL command.

curl -X 'POST' \
  'https://api.enterprise.wikimedia.com/v2/articles/NASA' \
  -H 'accept: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
  "filters": [
    {
      "field": "is_part_of.identifier",
      "value": "enwiki"
    }
  ],
  "limit": 1
}'

You'll receive a JSON response containing the same article data and format represented in the Snapshot API's file. The main difference here (besides being able to query pages individually) is that this response returns the live version of the article that is actively on the project today, whereas the Snapshot updates daily (for paid users) or once a month (for free users).

Software development kits (SDKs)

We have built software development kits (SDK) in Go and Python to help you get started:

Next steps

There you have it! You've created your account and made your first calls to Wikimedia Enterprise. To integrate properly:

• Work through the guides for the APIs that fit your use case: Metadata, Snapshot, On-demand, and Realtime.
• Fields, Filters, and Limit shows how to request exactly the data you need.
• Identifiers is the reference page for what each endpoint's {identifier} expects, since the format differs per resource.
• Tuning Credibility Signals walks through recommended thresholds, an evaluation strategy, and field-by-field reference tables.
• The Best Practices page collects the key takeaways per API.
• The API reference documents every endpoint and response field, and you can download the OpenAPI definition for Postman, codegen, or any other API tooling.
• Working with a coding agent? AI Agents and MCP covers the markdown versions of these pages and the docs MCP server.

If you have some additional questions, look through the FAQs or use your account dashboard to contact support or provide feedback.

Wikimedia Enterprise operates a status page at status.enterprise.wikimedia.com displaying uptime history and current status.

If you are interested in daily Snapshot dumps, Realtime firehose, or additional egress, contact us.