Response · Response header

Retry-After

How long the client should wait before retrying.

What is Retry-After?

Sent with 429 Too Many Requests, 503 Service Unavailable, or some 3xx responses to indicate when the client should retry. Value is either seconds or an HTTP date.

Typical usage

Set on rate-limit and maintenance responses.

Examples

Retry after 30 seconds

Retry-After: 30

Retry after a specific date

Retry-After: Wed, 21 Oct 2025 07:28:00 GMT

Specification

RFC 9110 §10.2.3

Frequently asked questions

What is the Retry-After HTTP header?

Sent with 429 Too Many Requests, 503 Service Unavailable, or some 3xx responses to indicate when the client should retry. Value is either seconds or an HTTP date.

Is Retry-After a request or response header?

Retry-After is a response header — the server sends it to the client. Set on rate-limit and maintenance responses.

What does a Retry-After header look like?

A typical Retry-After header looks like: Retry-After: 30 (Retry after 30 seconds).

Related headers

Location

The redirect target (3xx) or newly created resource URL (201).

Server

Identifies the server software.

Date

When the response was generated.

Allow

Which HTTP methods the target resource supports.

Link

Serialized <link> relationships as an HTTP header.

Work with this header

User-Agent Parser →See how servers read client hints.cURL Converter →Turn a curl command into fetch / code and back.URL Parser →Break a URL into scheme, host, path and query.