422Unprocessable Content

The request was understood perfectly, but its contents failed validation, so it cannot be acted on.

When you see it

Well-formed JSON with a missing required field, an email address in a valid string that is not a valid address, or a date that parses but falls outside an allowed range. The syntax is fine; the meaning is not.

This distinction is worth keeping. A 400 tells a client its request was garbled, which sends developers looking at serialisation. A 422 tells them the request arrived intact and a specific value was rejected, which is usually the truth and saves a lot of time.

Often confused with

400 Bad Request

400 means the server could not parse the request. 422 means it parsed it fine and the values inside failed validation. Many APIs return 400 for both, which is legal but less informative.

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Status codes

69 of 69 codes. Click a row to copy it.

1xx Informational (4)

2xx Success (10)

3xx Redirection (8)

4xx Client errors (31)

5xx Server errors (16)