Wikipedia-API
Python Wrapper for Wikipedia
Decision gist · record as of 2026-08-14
Yes. The package is actively maintained, has no security vulnerabilities, uses a permissive MIT license, and installs with low friction. It's well-suited for any project that needs to programmatically access Wikipedia content. The dual sync/async API design makes it flexible for both simple scripts and production async applications.AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying
Before you install
- Requires Python 3.10 or later; user-agent must include contact information per Wikimedia Foundation policy.
- Low friction install with three lightweight runtime dependencies (click, httpx, tenacity).
- Active maintenance with a recent release 80 days ago and 746 repository stars.
License · maintenance · safety
MIT (permissive) — MIT license (permissive) — you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.
last release 2026-05-26 (80 days) · last repo commit 2026-08-12 · 746 stars
0 known vulnerabilities (OSV.dev, 2026-08-14) · 19,140,409 downloads/mo, #1,073 on PyPI
Alternatives
Verify before relying
pip install wikipedia-api
import wikipediaapi
wiki = wikipediaapi.Wikipedia(user_agent='MyProject (contact@example.com)', language='en')
page = wiki.page('Python_(programming_language)')
print(page.summary)- Rate limiting or throttling behavior when making repeated Wikipedia API calls
- Handling of Wikipedia redirects and disambiguation pages
- Performance characteristics for large-scale batch page retrieval
What it is and what it does
Wikipedia-API wraps Wikipedia's MediaWiki API to let you programmatically fetch and parse Wikipedia pages. It provides both a synchronous Wikipedia client and an asynchronous AsyncWikipedia client, so you can choose blocking or non-blocking I/O depending on your application's needs. You initialize a client with a user-agent string and language code, then call .page() to retrieve a page object. From there you can access the page's summary, full text, sections with recursion support, links, categories, translations, and metadata like URLs and page IDs. The library handles underlying HTTP requests via httpx and uses tenacity for retry logic.
The synchronous API returns data directly from properties like page.summary and page.text, while the async API makes those same properties awaitable coroutines. Both APIs support extracting text in wiki markup or HTML format. The library is actively maintained, supports Python 3.10 and later, and has no known security vulnerabilities.
Use it for
- Scrape Wikipedia summaries and full article text for knowledge base or research tools
- Build a chatbot or Q&A system that retrieves Wikipedia content to answer user queries
- Extract page sections and structure for content analysis or document processing pipelines
- Fetch Wikipedia links and categories to build knowledge graphs or topic relationship maps
- Integrate Wikipedia data into async applications without blocking the event loop
Worth the install?
AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page. Verify before relying on it.
Yes.
The package is actively maintained, has no security vulnerabilities, uses a permissive MIT license, and installs with low friction. It's well-suited for any project that needs to programmatically access Wikipedia content. The dual sync/async API design makes it flexible for both simple scripts and production async applications.
Install
wikipedia-api on PyPI
Before you install
Low friction install with three lightweight runtime dependencies (click, httpx, tenacity). Active maintenance with a recent release 80 days ago and 746 repository stars. Requires Python 3.10 or later.
Requires Python 3.10 or later; user-agent must include contact information per Wikimedia Foundation policy.
License in practice
MIT license (permissive) — you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely in commercial and private projects with minimal restrictions.
Quickstart
pip install wikipedia-api
import wikipediaapi
wiki = wikipediaapi.Wikipedia(user_agent='MyProject (contact@example.com)', language='en')
page = wiki.page('Python_(programming_language)')
print(page.summary)Verify before relying
- Rate limiting or throttling behavior when making repeated Wikipedia API calls
- Handling of Wikipedia redirects and disambiguation pages
- Performance characteristics for large-scale batch page retrieval
Package facts
| License | MIT permissive |
| Python support | Supports the current Python release >=3.10 |
| Install friction | Low. Pure-Python wheel |
| Runtime dependencies | 3 packagesclickhttpxtenacity |
| Maintenance | Actively maintained 80 days since the last release |
| Last repo commit | |
| First released | |
| Downloads | 19,140,409 / month, #1,073 on PyPI 30-day window, as of 2026-08-14 |
| Known vulnerabilities | None known OSV.dev, checked 2026-08-14 |
| Classifiers | Development Status :: 5 - Production/StableEnvironment :: Web EnvironmentIntended Audience :: DevelopersLicense :: OSI Approved :: MIT LicenseOperating System :: OS IndependentProgramming Language :: PythonProgramming Language :: Python :: 3Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14Programming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: CPythonProgramming Language :: Python :: Implementation :: PyPyTopic :: Communications :: EmailTopic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules |
Evidence: wikipedia_api-0.15.0-py3-none-any.whl
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