How to consume post from wordpress.com Rest API

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, you might notice something confusing:

1. Visiting /wp-json/wp/v2/posts returns HTML instead of JSON
2. Even curl or Postman may not work as expected
3. It looks like the REST API is not exposed

This leads many developers to believe there’s a configuration issue — but that’s not true.

Let’s clear this up properly.

The Common Mistake

Most tutorials online assume self-hosted WordPress, where this works perfectly:

https://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

However, on WordPress.com–hosted sites, this endpoint is not reliably exposed due to:

• CDN routing
• HTML-first optimizations
• Platform-level restrictions

You cannot fix this with settings or plugins on WordPress.com.

The Correct API for WordPress.com Sites

WordPress.com provides its own official public REST API, designed specifically for hosted sites.

✅ Base API

https://public-api.wordpress.com/wp/v2

✅ Fetch posts from a site

https://public-api.wordpress.com/wp/v2/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/posts

This endpoint:

• Always returns JSON
• Works in browser, curl, Postman, and fetch
• Is officially supported
• Requires no configuration

🧠 Why This Works

There are two different REST APIs in the WordPress ecosystem:

The public API bypasses site routing completely and talks directly to WordPress.com infrastructure.

📌 Useful Endpoints

Get all posts

/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/posts

Get pages

/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/pages

Get post by slug

/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/posts?slug=my-post-slu

Pagination

/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/posts?page=1&number=10

🚀 Example: Fetch Posts in JavaScript

fetch("https://public-api.wordpress.com/wp/v2/sites/itrate.wordpress.com/posts")
  .then(res => res.json())
  .then(posts => {
    posts.forEach(post => {
      console.log(post.title);
    });
  });

❗ Important Notes

• This API is read-first (perfect for blogs, docs, headless frontends)
• Authentication is limited compared to self-hosted WordPress
• Ideal for Next.js, React, mobile apps, static sites

If you need:

• Custom REST endpoints
• Full write access
• JWT or custom auth

👉 Self-hosted WordPress is the better choice.

Final Takeaway

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com,
do not rely on /wp-json endpoints.

Use the WordPress.com Public REST API instead.

This avoids confusion, redirects, and wasted debugging time.