HTTP 402 Payment Required

What does HTTP 402 mean?

Reserved for future use; some APIs use it when a payment or plan upgrade is needed. There is no standard behavior, but services such as Stripe, Shopify and various SaaS APIs return 402 when a card is declined, a subscription has lapsed or a quota requires an upgrade.

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

Common causes of a 402 error

• Failed payment or exceeded paid quota on an API.

How to fix 402 Payment Required

• Check the billing status of the account.

402 and SEO

Pages should not return 402 to crawlers.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required

How to return a 402 response

Node.js (Express)

res.status(402).json({ error: 'Payment Required' });

PHP

http_response_code(402);

Python (Flask)

return {'error': 'Payment Required'}, 402

Go (net/http)

w.WriteHeader(402)

nginx

return 402;

Related status codes

• 403 Forbidden — The server understood the request but refuses to authorize it.
• 429 Too Many Requests — The client sent too many requests in a given amount of time.

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