wikihow.com APIwikihow.com ↗
Access wikiHow articles via API. Search by keyword, fetch full step-by-step instructions, tips, warnings, ingredients, and categories in structured JSON.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/16abcbb9-b00b-4c0d-955e-3d11986d3e68/search?limit=10&query=how+to+cook+pasta&offset=0' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Search for articles on wikiHow by keyword. Returns paginated results with article titles, URLs, view counts, and last updated information.
| Param | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| limit | integer | Maximum number of results to return. |
| queryrequired | string | The search term. |
| offset | integer | Offset for pagination (number of results to skip). |
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"results": "array of search result objects each containing title, url, views, and updated",
"next_offset": "integer offset for fetching the next page of results",
"total_results": "integer count of results returned"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"results": [
{
"url": "https://www.wikihow.com/Cook-Pasta",
"title": "Cook Pasta",
"views": "2,781,956 views",
"updated": "1 year ago"
},
{
"url": "https://www.wikihow.com/Measure-Cooked-Pasta",
"title": "Measure Cooked Pasta",
"views": "66,997 views",
"updated": "3 months ago"
}
],
"next_offset": 15,
"total_results": 10
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the wikihow.com API
The wikiHow API provides 3 endpoints to search and retrieve structured content from wikiHow's library of how-to articles. The get_article endpoint returns up to 8 distinct response fields — including step-by-step topics, tips, warnings, ingredients, and categories — for any article identified by title or page ID. The search endpoint supports paginated keyword queries, and get_random returns a random article's title, URL, and page ID.
Search and Article Retrieval
The search endpoint accepts a required query string and optional limit and offset integers for pagination. Each result in the results array includes the article title, url, views (total view count), and updated (last modified date). The next_offset field allows you to walk through additional pages of results, and total_results reflects the count returned in the current response.
Full Article Structure
The get_article endpoint accepts either a title (formatted as it appears in the URL path, e.g. Cook-Pasta) or a numeric pageid. The response organizes content into topics — each with a title and an array of steps, where every step has a title and description. Alongside step content, the endpoint returns tips and warnings as flat string arrays, and ingredients as a string array that is populated for recipe-style articles. The categories array lists the wikiHow category paths the article belongs to.
Random Article Discovery
The get_random endpoint takes no parameters and returns a single randomly selected article's title, url, and pageid. This is useful for sampling content, building discovery features, or testing downstream article processing pipelines against varied article types.
Identifiers and Cross-Referencing
Both get_article and get_random return a pageid integer. You can use a pageid returned from search or get_random directly as the pageid input to get_article, making it straightforward to chain a discovery call into a full content fetch without constructing a URL.
- Build a how-to content aggregator using
searchresults filtered by keyword and sorted byviews. - Extract structured recipe data from wikiHow cooking articles using the
ingredientsandtopicsfields. - Populate a knowledge base or chatbot with step-by-step instructions from
topicsreturned byget_article. - Surface safety-related
warningsfrom wikiHow articles in a companion app for DIY or home repair tasks. - Generate a daily random tip widget by calling
get_randomand then fetchingtipsviaget_article. - Index wikiHow
categoriesmetadata to classify how-to content by topic domain in a content pipeline. - Paginate through wikiHow search results using
offsetandnext_offsetto build a bulk article dataset.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does wikiHow have an official developer API?+
What does `get_article` return for non-recipe articles — is the `ingredients` field empty?+
ingredients array is returned but will be empty. It is only populated when the article includes a list of required materials or ingredients. All other fields — topics, tips, warnings, and categories — are returned regardless of article type.Does the `search` endpoint return the full article content, or just metadata?+
search endpoint returns metadata only: title, url, views, and updated for each result. Full content — including topics, steps, tips, warnings, and ingredients — requires a follow-up call to get_article using the article's title or page ID.Does the API expose article images or embedded media from wikiHow articles?+
How reliable is the `views` field returned by `search` — does it reflect real-time counts?+
views field reflects the view count as available at the time of the request and may not update in real time. wikiHow does not publish a live view-count feed, so there can be a lag between actual page traffic and what the field returns. Treat it as a relative popularity signal rather than a precise live counter.