---
title: "402 Payment Required — what it means and how to fix it"
description: "Reserved for payment; in practice used by APIs to say a plan limit or billing problem is blocking the request. What causes an HTTP 402, what to try as a visitor, and what to check if it is your own site."
url: https://atoneplace.net/error/402/
site: "At One Place"
---

# HTTP 402 — Payment Required

**HTTP 402: Payment Required**

Reserved for payment; in practice used by APIs to say a plan limit or billing problem is blocking the request.

## What 402 actually means

This code was set aside for some future digital cash system that never arrived, and the specification still lists it as reserved. Real services adopted it anyway: several major APIs return 402 when an account is out of credit, a subscription has lapsed, or a free-tier quota is spent. Since there is no standard behaviour, the response body is the only place the actual reason lives.

## Common causes

- An API account is out of prepaid credit
- A subscription payment failed and the account was suspended
- A free-tier usage quota has been exhausted
- A trial period ended

## If you're just trying to view the page

1. Check the billing page of the service you are using — a failed card is the usual cause
2. Look at your plan's usage limits; you may have hit a monthly cap
3. Contact the service if billing looks fine, since 402 is used loosely and may not mean what it says

## If it's your site

1. Put the actual reason and the remediation URL in the body — 402 alone communicates nothing
2. Consider 403 with a clear error code if your users are not paying you directly
3. Send `Retry-After` if the block lifts on a known schedule, such as a monthly quota reset

## Reference

- **Status code:** 402
- **Reason phrase:** Payment Required
- **Category:** 4xx — Client Error
- **Defined in:** RFC 9110 §15.5.3

## Common questions

### What does HTTP 402 mean?

Reserved for payment; in practice used by APIs to say a plan limit or billing problem is blocking the request. This code was set aside for some future digital cash system that never arrived, and the specification still lists it as reserved. Real services adopted it anyway: several major APIs return 402 when an account is out of credit, a subscription has lapsed, or a free-tier quota is spent.

### How do I fix a 402 error?

Check the billing page of the service you are using — a failed card is the usual cause

### Is 402 a client error or a server error?

402 is in the 4xx range, which means client error. The request itself was the problem, so retrying it unchanged will usually return the same code.

## Related pages

- [404 Not Found](https://atoneplace.net/error/404/)
- [403 Forbidden](https://atoneplace.net/error/403/)
- [401 Unauthorized](https://atoneplace.net/error/401/)
- [429 Too Many Requests](https://atoneplace.net/error/429/)
- [400 Bad Request](https://atoneplace.net/error/400/)
- [413 Content Too Large](https://atoneplace.net/error/413/)
- [422 Unprocessable Content](https://atoneplace.net/error/422/)
- [405 Method Not Allowed](https://atoneplace.net/error/405/)
- [409 Conflict](https://atoneplace.net/error/409/)
- [415 Unsupported Media Type](https://atoneplace.net/error/415/)
- [408 Request Timeout](https://atoneplace.net/error/408/)
- [410 Gone](https://atoneplace.net/error/410/)

## Sources

- Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry — IANA (https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/)
- RFC 9110: HTTP Semantics — IETF (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html)