1. Learning: APIs & Web Scraping

API errors and their meaning

This article will discuss common API errors, their causes, and potential solutions.

400 response code (Bad Requests)
The request you specified is invalid. The details of the error are shown in the JSON body of the response. The most common cause of an HTTP 400 response is passing invalid parameters to the APIs, or combinations of parameter values that are not supported. To resolve this, check parameters and refer to the parameters documentation for correct usage.


401 response code(Unauthorized)

This means that the API Key supplied with your request is not valid. To confirm your API you can go to your account profile, your API key is shown on the “About You” section.

402 response code (Payment Required) 
This means that your account has either run out of available credits (try enabling Overage or upgrading your Plan), or there is a payment problem.


404 response code (Not Found) 

The request URL you specified is invalid. Check the request URL you are using (if you receive an HTTP 404 it's likely the path you're using is not correct). It could also be you are using an incorrect HTTP verb - i.e. making an HTTP POST where a GET is required. 

429 response code (Too Many Requests) 
You've exceeded your rate limit. To resolve this, you can reduce request frequency or upgrade your plan.

500 response code (Internal Server Error)

There was a problem processing your request. You should retry your request after a delay and if you continue to experience the same result please contact our support team.


503 response code (Service Unavailable)
Returned in response to the skip_on_incident request parameter being set and there is a live parsing incident ongoing at the time of the request. The body of the response will contain a JSON object whose message property defines the type of parsing incident that is currently active.