Wikipedia Article Daily Pageviews

Export Wikipedia pageviews by article title and UTC day using Wikimedia's official public Pageviews API. Supply up to 20 article titles, select a Wikipedia language project, access type and inclusive date range, and get one structured row per reported day and article. This is useful for audience analysts, editors, researchers, and teams comparing article interest over time.

Who is it for?

Editors checking audience response to editorial updates, researchers comparing historical attention to biographies, and analytics teams plotting per-article series can use these rows without parsing page HTML. Supply exact article titles; this is not a search-discovery product.

Why use this Actor?

The output is immediately usable as a dated dataset: each record carries the count, article, project, access type and exact source API URL. Schedule the Actor on Apify for repeatable snapshots or run it once for a historical comparison. Unlike scraping the rendered article page, this Actor retrieves the official daily count directly; it does not estimate visits from HTML or search rankings.

What data do I get?

Field	Meaning
article	Supplied article title with spaces
project	Language edition, such as en.wikipedia
date	UTC day, YYYY-MM-DD
views	Wikimedia-reported user pageviews for that day
access	all-access, desktop, mobile-app, or mobile-web
source	Exact official Wikimedia API request URL
retrievedAt	UTC timestamp when this row was retrieved

Getting started

1. Enter one or more exact Wikipedia article titles (not search terms).
2. Choose the language project that hosts those titles, such as en.wikipedia.
3. Pick an inclusive date range ending at least two days before today, at most 366 days long.
4. Optionally select a device access channel or a maximum number of daily rows.
5. Run and download the default dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Input example

{"articles":["Albert Einstein","Marie Curie"],"project":"en.wikipedia","startDate":"2026-01-01","endDate":"2026-01-03","access":"all-access"}

The articles list accepts 1–20 article titles. project defaults to en.wikipedia. maxItems defaults to 5000 and stops processing once the output cap is reached. Duplicate titles are fetched once. Spaces in titles are normalized to underscores for the official API URL. Dates must be real UTC calendar days; date ranges longer than 366 days and recent dates are rejected rather than silently clipped.

Output example

One observed row for the input above:

{"article":"Albert Einstein","project":"en.wikipedia","date":"2026-01-01","views":15356,"access":"all-access","source":"https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/user/Albert_Einstein/daily/20260101/20260103","retrievedAt":"2026-09-27T20:04:28.160Z"}

How much does it cost to export Wikipedia article daily pageviews?

This Actor charges one start event per run ($0.0001) plus one item event per emitted daily row. BRONZE is $0.0003 per row; FREE is $0.000345, SILVER $0.000234, and GOLD/PLATINUM/DIAMOND $0.00018. At BRONZE, 1, 5, and 14 rows cost an estimated $0.0004, $0.0016, and $0.0043 respectively, including the start event. A seven-day comparison of two articles generates up to 14 charged item events and one start event; an article with no API rows produces no item charges. Tiers depend on qualifying monthly Store spend, not on the row count in one run. Apify platform usage may also apply. Prices and payout estimates can be revised by refunds, fraud, disputes, taxes, corrections, and contractual clawbacks. Check the active pricing panel before scheduling large recurring runs.

Integrations and recurring monitoring

Schedule a weekly run with a fixed historical window, or update the date range in your orchestration job. Export the default dataset to Google Sheets for charts, join daily rows to an internal reporting table using (project, article, date, access), or trigger a webhook when a run finishes. This Actor provides snapshots, not built-in alerts, persistent state, or automatic comparison with prior runs.

API usage

Start a run with the Apify API, replacing YOUR_TOKEN with your own Apify token:

$curl -X POST 'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~wikipedia-article-daily-pageviews/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"articles":["Albert Einstein"],"startDate":"2026-01-01","endDate":"2026-01-03"}'

JavaScript: await client.actor('automation-lab/wikipedia-article-daily-pageviews').call({ articles: ['Albert Einstein'], startDate: '2026-01-01', endDate: '2026-01-03' }) with ApifyClient. Python: client.actor('automation-lab/wikipedia-article-daily-pageviews').call(run_input={'articles':['Albert Einstein'],'startDate':'2026-01-01','endDate':'2026-01-03'}) with apify-client. Fetch the returned run's default dataset for the full time series.

MCP use

In Claude Code, connect this Actor:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/wikipedia-article-daily-pageviews"

For Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code, configure the Apify MCP server using your client's remote HTTP MCP settings (and authenticate with Apify):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/wikipedia-article-daily-pageviews"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts: “Export daily English Wikipedia views of Albert Einstein for January 1–7, 2026.” “Compare daily views for Albert Einstein and Marie Curie during the first week of January 2026.” Authentication and client support for remote MCP depend on your Apify MCP setup.

Limits and troubleshooting

The Wikimedia API is public but may temporarily return 429 or 5xx; the Actor retries these failures twice with backoff and then fails clearly. Unknown article titles, non-Wikipedia projects, unavailable dates, and other permanent API errors fail rather than becoming zero-view rows. Article titles must exist in the selected language edition; this Actor does not search for a page or follow redirects. A row count lower than the calendar span can reflect missing upstream data. Run separate date windows for longer history. The default dataset does not include raw HTML or aggregate totals.

Legality and responsible use

Wikimedia makes these aggregated statistics available through its public API. Review the Wikimedia API terms and respect source attribution and request limits. Avoid claims about individual readers: the public counts are aggregated and are not visitor profiles.

Data handling and support

The Actor sends requested titles, project and dates to Wikimedia's public REST API. It does not use AI or another paid extraction provider. The default Apify dataset contains aggregate counts, requested article titles and retrieval times; Apify stores run input, logs and datasets according to your account's retention settings. Do not enter private data as an article title. Delete runs and datasets through Apify Console or API if you no longer need them. For problems, open an issue on this Actor's Apify Store page with the run ID and a non-sensitive input example.

Data freshness

Wikimedia may update or backfill historical counts. Re-running the same date range can produce revised figures. Keep retrievedAt if you compare snapshots and exclude incomplete recent dates from automated trend charts.

FAQ

Can I use another language edition? Yes: set project to a Wikipedia project such as de.wikipedia, and supply article titles in that edition.

Does this count visits to other Wikimedia projects? No. This Actor intentionally limits project names to Wikipedia language editions.

Why did my run fail with a 404? Check the article spelling, language edition, access channel, and available date range. A nonexistent page is not reported as a zero-view article.

Can it send alerts? No. Use an Apify schedule and your own downstream comparison/notification workflow.

Related Actor

For article content and metadata rather than official daily audience counts, see Wikipedia Scraper. These are complementary datasets, not interchangeable measurements.