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MediaWiki Search API

Wikimedia Foundation
open source / Overall score: n/a

The search surface of the MediaWiki Action API, served at the `api.php` endpoint of every MediaWiki site, including Wikipedia and Wikinews, which answer it for anonymous callers. Its `list=search` module returns ranked page titles with highlighted snippets and page metadata, and can run as a generator that passes its results to the TextExtracts module, which returns plain-text extracts of the pages found. On Wikimedia's wikis it is backed by the CirrusSearch extension over an OpenSearch index.

Scored as the composable search surface of MediaWiki's Action API, not as Wikipedia: `list=search` and `generator=search` with the TextExtracts module, which has shipped bundled with MediaWiki since 1.34, and CirrusSearch, the backend Wikimedia deploys. Both GitHub repositories are mirrors of Wikimedia's own Gerrit. TextExtracts' documentation asks Wikimedia's own production features to use the Page Content Service for summaries instead. Wikimedia sets its own API rate limits, and MediaWiki's guidance asks callers to send requests in series rather than in parallel.

Openness

5 high confidence
5.0
license
GPL-2.0(OSI
source
public(MediaWiki core and the CirrusSearch and TextExtracts extensions, over an OpenSearch index)
self-host
yes(any MediaWiki install can enable CirrusSearch against its own OpenSearch cluster)
core features withheld
no — the Wikimedia Foundation runs it as a free public API and describes the engine as open source

MediaWiki and the CirrusSearch extension behind its search are both licensed GPL-2.0-or-later, and the extension's README walks through running the same search against your own OpenSearch cluster. The Wikimedia Foundation's search team describes what it runs as an open-source search engine, and nothing in the API is sold, so there is no paid tier for anything to be held back for.

Adoption

not assessed

Wikimedia publishes no request count for the search module, or for the Action API as a whole, on the pages read. The API needs no key, account or client package, so there is no sign-up or download figure to count instead either. No level is recorded.

Capability

4 medium confidence
4.0

A search returns pages ranked by relevance with highlighted snippets, and the same query can run as a generator so that one call also returns a plain-text extract of each page found. Finding pages and returning their cleaned text through one interface puts it level with DDGS. It searches the wiki it is called on rather than the open web, which limits what it covers rather than what it does, and it composes no answer.

Verified 2026-10-13