image-archive
Wikimedia Commons
The largest repository of freely licensed media, over 110 million files, behind Wikipedia and its sister projects. Everything is searchable on the website, and the standard MediaWiki API serves the same search without a key. Reach for it when you need openly licensed images and other media with documented sources and licensing.
Why it’s useful & how it works
The go-to source whenever a search needs openly licensed images with clear provenance. Every file carries licence information and sourcing, which matters in research and publishing contexts. You can search by keyword directly on the site, filter by media type, and sort by relevance or recency. The same search is available via a keyless API, so Echo can surface results programmatically without any sign-in.
What’s inside
Over 143 million freely licensed media files as of 2026, spanning photographs, illustrations, audio, video, and documents. Images alone account for around 120 million files, with the rest split across audio, video, and PDFs.
API access
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=search&srnamespace=6&format=json
What we measured
Our own probes, not the archive’s own claims. Re-run periodically; every reading below is dated.
Reachability
- Direct request
- Responded HTTP 200 244 ms
- Through a datacenter proxy
- Responded HTTP 200 1 s
- API, direct
- Responded HTTP 200 1.3 s
- API, through a proxy
- Responded HTTP 200 1.8 s
Did a real search return anything?
Returned results · 24471053 results for the sample query · median 2 s · stable across runs
Sample query: File:Felis catus-cat on snow.jpg
Benchmark coverage
Found 8 of 8 test items (100%) in the Images cluster. Median response 637 ms.
By how well known the item is: 3/3 well-known, 4/4 mid, 1/1 obscure .
One item it found: File:Felis catus-cat on snow.jpg
Reachability measured 2026-08-22. Search checked 2026-08-22. Benchmark run 2026-08-22.
Access
Programmatic API access (a key may be required, see the API tag).