The HTTP 503
Service Unavailable
server error response code indicates that the server is not ready to handle the request.
Common causes are a server that is down for maintenance or that is overloaded. Note that together with this response, a user-friendly page explaining the problem should be sent. This responses should be used for temporary conditions and the {{HTTPHeader("Retry-After")}} HTTP header should, if possible, contain the estimated time for the recovery of the service.
Caching-related headers that are sent along with this response should be taken care of, as a 503 status is often a temporary condition and responses should usually not be cached.
Status
503 Service Unavailable
Specifications
Specification | Title |
---|---|
{{RFC("7231", "503 Service Unavailable" , "6.6.4")}} | Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and Content |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you’d like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data/README.md and send us a pull request.
{{Compat}}
See also
- {{HTTPHeader("Retry-After")}}