# Wikimedia Commons

> Cultural heritage items for Worldwide. Access: Public API. Terms checked November 2, 2026.

- Slug: wikimedia-commons
- Page: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/sources/wikimedia-commons
- JSON: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/v1/sources/wikimedia-commons
- Records: Cultural heritage items
- Places: Worldwide
- Years: Not stated by the source
- Access method: api
- Key required: no
- Rate limit: No fixed figure for reads: make requests in series, send a User-Agent with contact details, use maxlag, and back off on 429 or Retry-After (API:Etiquette and the Wikimedia API rate limits page).
- Status: live
- Review: verified, checked by hand on 2026-11-02
- Homepage: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
- API docs: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
- Terms: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Wikimedia_Foundation_User-Agent_Policy

## Notes

Paintings, maps and prints with a license on every file page (extmetadata LicenseShortName and Artist through prop=imageinfo). Example: the Trumbull Surrender of General Burgoyne is on Commons. robots.txt disallows /w/ for crawlers, which covers /w/api.php; the API pages invite API use, so Lineage calls the API and never crawls pages. Every image is stored with its license and captioned "context, not a portrait".

## Evidence

- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_APIs/Rate_limits
- https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Wikimedia_Foundation_User-Agent_Policy
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/robots.txt

## Status

Live at the last check, 2026-11-03 04:33 UTC. HTTP 200 in 147 ms. One check a day.

This file describes a catalog entry only.