HTTP 418 — I'm a Teapot
HTTP 418
I'm a Teapot
An April Fools' joke code from 1998 that servers still return for fun; it is reserved and has no real meaning.
What 418 actually means
It comes from RFC 2324, the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, published on 1 April 1998: a teapot asked to brew coffee should answer 418. It is not part of HTTP. IANA lists 418 as reserved and unused precisely because so many implementations joked about it that the number could never safely be assigned to anything real. If you have hit one deliberately, some developer left an easter egg; if you hit one by accident, a service is using it as an arbitrary "we are blocking you" code.
Common causes
- A deliberate easter egg on a site or API
- A service repurposing an unused code to signal an automated block
- A test fixture or a joke endpoint
If you're just trying to view the page
- Nothing — it is a joke, not a fault on your side
- If a real service returned it while blocking you, contact the service; the code itself carries no defined meaning
If it's your site
- Do not use 418 for anything real; it is reserved and clients have no defined behaviour for it
- Use 403 for a refusal or 429 for rate limiting, with a clear error body
Reference
- Status code
- 418
- Reason phrase
- I'm a Teapot
- Category
- 4xx — Client Error
- Defined in
- RFC 9110 §15.5.19 (reserved); joke origin RFC 2324 §2.3.2
Common questions
- What does HTTP 418 mean?
- An April Fools' joke code from 1998 that servers still return for fun; it is reserved and has no real meaning. It comes from RFC 2324, the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, published on 1 April 1998: a teapot asked to brew coffee should answer 418. It is not part of HTTP.
- How do I fix a 418 error?
- Nothing — it is a joke, not a fault on your side
- Is 418 a client error or a server error?
- 418 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 The server is reachable and working, but there is nothing at the address you ask
- 403 Forbidden The server understood the request and is refusing to allow it, and logging in wi
- 401 Unauthorized You need to authenticate, and either you did not or your credentials were reject
- 429 Too Many Requests You have sent more requests than the service allows in a given period.
- 400 Bad Request The server could not understand the request because something about it is malfor
- 413 Content Too Large The request body is bigger than the server is willing to accept.
- 422 Unprocessable Content The request is well-formed and understood, but the data in it fails the rules.
- 405 Method Not Allowed The URL exists, but it does not accept the HTTP method you used.
- 409 Conflict The request cannot be completed because it clashes with the current state of the
- 415 Unsupported Media Type The server will not accept the format of the body you sent.
- 408 Request Timeout The server gave up waiting for the client to finish sending its request.
- 410 Gone The resource was deliberately removed and is not coming back, and there is no fo