HTTP 202 — Accepted
HTTP 202
Accepted
The request was accepted for processing, but the work has not finished yet.
What 202 actually means
A deliberate "we will get to it". The server has queued the work — a video transcode, a bulk import, a report build — and is answering now rather than holding the connection open for minutes. Crucially, 202 makes no promise that the work will succeed; the client is expected to poll a status URL or wait for a webhook to find out.
Common causes
- A job was pushed onto a background queue
- A batch operation was validated and scheduled
- A long-running export or transcode was started
If you're just trying to view the page
- Wait — the job is running and the result will appear when it is done
- If a status page never moves past "processing", contact the service; the queue may be stuck
If it's your site
- Return a status URL (in `Location` or in the body) so clients can poll — a 202 with no way to check progress is close to useless
- Make sure failures after acceptance are reported somewhere the client will see
- Do not use 202 for work that finishes in milliseconds; the extra round trip costs more than it saves
Reference
- Status code
- 202
- Reason phrase
- Accepted
- Category
- 2xx — Success
- Defined in
- RFC 9110 §15.3.3
Common questions
- What does HTTP 202 mean?
- The request was accepted for processing, but the work has not finished yet. A deliberate "we will get to it". The server has queued the work — a video transcode, a bulk import, a report build — and is answering now rather than holding the connection open for minutes.
- How do I fix a 202 error?
- Wait — the job is running and the result will appear when it is done
- Is 202 a client error or a server error?
- 202 is in the 2xx range, which means success. It is not an error at all.
Related pages
- 200 OK The request worked and the response contains what was asked for.
- 204 No Content The request succeeded and there is deliberately no body to send back.
- 201 Created The request succeeded and a new resource was created as a result.
- 206 Partial Content The server is returning only the requested byte range of a file, not the whole t
- 207 Multi-Status A WebDAV response carrying separate status codes for several resources at once.
- 203 Non-Authoritative Information The request succeeded, but an intermediary modified the response on the way.
- 205 Reset Content The request succeeded and the client should clear the form that sent it.
- 208 Already Reported Inside a WebDAV multi-status response, this member was already listed earlier so
- 226 IM Used The server is returning a delta against a copy the client already has, rather th