Information
- Terms of Service
- OpenAPI version:
2.0
Overview
WP Engine Hosting Platform API 1.21.11
Section titled “WP Engine Hosting Platform API 1.21.11”The API described in this document is subject to change.
API Principles
The Hosting Platform API is designed around RESTful standards:
- Uses standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
- Returns responses in JSON format
- Follows consistent URL structures
- Implements standard HTTP status codes
- Provides structured, detailed error messages
Versioning
The current version of the API is v1. All requests should include the version in the URL: API Base URL.
https://api.wpengineapi.com/v1Rate Limits
To ensure reliable performance, the API enforces usage limits on a per account or per IP basis.
Caution If these limits are exceeded, the API responds with 429 Too Many Requests.
Accounts, Sites and Environments
- Environment - each environment represents a single WordPress installation. Environments can be of types Development, Staging or Production.
- Site - sites are simply containers and can hold from one to three environments. Standard sites can have up to three environments, with a maximum of one Development, Staging and Production environment in each site. Sandbox sites have only a single Development environment. Learn more about Sites and Environments.
- Account - each account maps to a hosting plan and governs the number of sites and other resources available.
Access Management
API credentials share the same access levels as the user they belong to. Therefore, removing a user from a hosting account—or changing their environment permissions—instantly revokes their access across both the User Portal and the API. Because users can belong to multiple accounts, removing them from a specific account secures your data without needing to delete their global WP Engine credentials entirely.
Learn more about WP Engine users and roles.
Bugs / Limitations / Warnings
Sites
- For example, you currently cannot create a multisite install or associate a site with a group.
Installs
- Please be mindful when creating installs in large batches, as doing so can potentially:
- Degrade the performance of the entire cluster that the installs are hosted on.
- Overload the cluster, causing the provisioning of the installs to fail.
- The create install operation is rate limited, so multiple create installs in quick succession will return a “Too many requests” message.
Domains
- Please be aware that environments with large numbers of domains will experience degraded domain API response times.
- Create and update domain operations are rate limited. Multiple requests to these operations in quick succession will return a 429 “Too many requests” message.
Caches
- Cache purging is rate limited. The limit is unique for each type (object, page or CDN) due to the nature of the cache type. Multiple requests to purge the same cache type in quick succession will return a 429 “Too many requests” message.
Activity Logging
Actions taken via the WP Engine API are automatically recorded in the User Portal’s Account Activity Log for the corresponding account.
- What is logged: Any state-altering request (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) is recorded. The entry captures the email address of the user whose credentials were used, their IP address, and the specific environment where the action occurred.
- What is not logged: Read-only data retrieval (GET requests) are omitted to keep your logs clean and focused on actual changes.
Authentication
Section titled “Authentication”basicAuth
Section titled “basicAuth”API username and password from Portal’s API Access page: https://my.wpengine.com/api_access
Security scheme type: basic