HTTP 418 I’m a teapot

What does HTTP 418 mean?

An April Fools’ joke from the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (1998). The code is reserved and not used by real servers, though some sites and frameworks return it as an Easter egg or to answer bots they want to discourage.

4xx Client error: The request has a problem the client can fix: wrong URL, missing credentials, bad data or too many requests.

418 and SEO

Do not return 418 to crawlers — it is treated as a client error and the page is not indexed.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 418 I’m a teapot

How to return a 418 response

Node.js (Express)

res.status(418).json({ error: 'I’m a teapot' });

PHP

http_response_code(418);

Python (Flask)

return {'error': 'I’m a teapot'}, 418

Go (net/http)

w.WriteHeader(418)

nginx

return 418;

Related status codes

• 400 Bad Request — The server cannot process the request because it is malformed.
• 403 Forbidden — The server understood the request but refuses to authorize it.
• 503 Service Unavailable — The server is temporarily unable to handle the request.

Check which status code a URL returns with the HTTP header checker.