I'm a teapot

What does HTTP 418 I'm a teapot mean?

An April Fools’ joke from RFC 2324 (the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol). It is not a real error you should rely on, but it occasionally appears as an Easter egg.

4xx responses indicate the request was faulty: bad syntax, missing authentication, or a resource that does not exist. The fix usually lives on the client/request side.

When you'll see HTTP 418

• As an Easter egg or joke endpoint
• Some APIs return it playfully to reject unwanted automated requests

Example

GET /coffee HTTP/1.1

→ HTTP/1.1 418 I'm a teapot

Related 4xx status codes