HTTP STATUS TOOL

How to check your HTTP status with the HTTP status tool

With our HTTP status tool, it's easy to check your HTTP status. Just follow these steps:

1. Enter your URL (or list of URLs)
2. Click "Check"
3. View your results

For the fastest results and best experience, avoid entering hundreds of URLs at a time.

If you're looking to get the HTTP status code for that many URLs, use a tool like Screaming Frog, which can crawl up to 500 URLs for free. It'll crawl your entire website and provide a report that you can break down by status code, like 301 and 404 errors.

What our HTTP status tool checks

When you use our HTTP status tool, you receive a report that covers:

1. HTTP code
2. HTTP status
3. Host
4. Full response

You can learn more about these report items below:

HTTP code

The HTTP code of your report summarizes the HTTP code generated by a URL.

A few examples of common HTTP status codes include:

1. 200
2. 301
3. 302
4. 404
5. 500
6. 503

When looking at HTTP status codes, you can often break them down into the following categories:

1. 1xx informational responses: Refer to in-progress received requests
2. 2xx success: Refer to received, understood, and accepted requests
3. 3xx redirection: Refer to requests that require additional actions to finish
4. 4xx client errors: Refer to requests that cannot get fulfilled or contain incorrect syntax
5. 5xx server errors: Refer to requests where the server failed to fulfill a valid request

Check out our complete list of HTTP status codes to learn what they mean!

HTTP status

With HTTP status, you can view a quick summary or explanation of your HTTP code.

For example, a URL that returns a 200 HTTP status code will have "OK" listed as its status. That's because a 200 HTTP status code indicates that the page is live. Ideally, you want this code because it says that users and web crawlers can access the page.

Use this table to view all the potential HTTP statuses, alongside their relevant HTTP status code!

Host

Your hostname summarizes the owner (or host) of a resource, like your website. In the case of Google, for example, the hostname is "www.google.com." As you can tell, your hostname often coincides with your domain name.

Full response

With our HTTP status checker, you also receive a full response report. You can view this report by clicking "View." This report can provide valuable server, HTTP status, and analytics information that you can use and reference.

How to read your HTTPS status report

When the HTTP status code checker generates your report, you'll want to look for the following:

1. 3xx redirection errors, which reveal temporary and permanent redirects on your site
2. 4xx client errors, which prevent users from viewing a specific page on your site
3. 5xx server errors, which prevent users from accessing a particular page on your site

In most cases, these are the HTTP statuses that you'll want to take action on first. You'll want to start with 5xx server errors, followed by 4xx client errors and 3xx redirection errors. Prioritizing fixes for these problems will have a tremendous impact on your website's usability and discoverability.

[Table] View the different types of HTTP status codes

For quick reference when reading your HTTP status reports, check out this HTTP status code table:

HTTP Status Code	HTTP Status
1xx informational response codes
100	Continue
101	Switching Protocols
102	Processing
103	Early Hints
2xx success codes
200	OK
201	Created
202	Accepted
203	Non-Authoritative Information
204	No Content
205	Reset Content
206	Partial Content
207	Multi-Status
208	Already Reported
226	IM Used
3xx redirection codes
300	Multiple Choices
301	Moved Permanently
302	Found
303	See Other
304	Not Modified
305	Use Proxy
307	Temporary Redirect
308	Permanent Redirect
4xx client error codes
400	Bad Request
401	Unauthorized
402	Payment Required
403	Forbidden
404	Not Found
405	Method Not Allowed
406	Not Acceptable
407	Proxy Authentication Required
408	Request Timeout
409	Conflict
410	Gone
411	Length Required
412	Precondition Failed
413	Request Entity Too Large
414	Request-URI Too Long
415	Unsupported Media Type
416	Requested Range Not Satisfiable
417	Expectation Failed
418	I'm a teapot
421	Misdirected Request
422	Unprocessable Entity
423	Locked
424	Failed Dependency
425	Too Early
426	Upgrade Required
428	Precondition Required
429	Too Many Requests
431	Request Header Fields Too Large
451	Unavailable for Legal Reasons
5xx server error codes
500	Internal Server Error
501	Not Implemented
502	Bad Gateway
503	Service Unavailable
504	Gateway Timeout
505	HTTP Version Not Supported
506	Variant Also Negotiates
507	Insufficient Storage
508	Loop Detected
510	Not Extended
511	Network Authentication Required

[Bonus] How to check your HTTP status without an HTTP status checker

While an HTTP status checker (like ours) can provide instant information about a URL and its HTTP status, you may want to audit the HTTP statuses of your entire website. If you're maintaining a site with hundreds of pages, an HTTP status tool isn't ideal.

The good news is that you can check the HTTP status of hundreds of URLs for free. Here's how:

Screaming Frog — it's a free web spider tool. This tool is a popular choice when optimizing a website for search engine optimization (SEO) because it provides insight into how search engine crawlers see your site.

Even better, Screaming Frog analyzes the HTTP status of your site's URLs.

If your website contains 500 URLs (or less), you can use Screaming Frog for free. If you have more than 500 URLs you want to crawl, you'll need to invest in the paid version of Screaming Frog. Unlike other tools, you can purchase a one-year license to Screaming Frog, versus having a monthly subscription.

Once you download Screaming Frog, follow these steps to check your HTTP status:

1. Click "Configuration" from the navigation menu and then "Spider"
2. Checkmark "Check Links Outside of Start Folder" and click "Ok"
3. Enter your URL in the "URL to spider" field and click "Start"

After your crawl finishes, you can review your HTTP status codes in the "Response Codes" tab.

If you want, you can even export these reports to a .CSV file. Just follow these steps:

1. Click "Bulk Export" from the navigation menu
2. Choose "Response Codes"
3. Select the reports to export, like for 3xx redirection errors

With your reports exported, you can upload them to Google Sheets and start fixing the errors!

FAQs about HTTP status codes

If you're curious to learn more about HTTP status codes, check out this FAQ:

What is an HTTP status code?

An HTTP status code is a server's response when someone requests to view a page on that server, whether it's a user or a crawler. Status codes get classified into five categories, based on their first numeral, like 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Why check HTTP status codes?

Checking HTTP status codes, like with our HTTP status tool, can help you find and fix issues on your site. You may not know, for instance, that a link to another page on your website generates a 404 error — but web crawlers do, which can affect a page's ranking in search results.

When you have a page that ranks poorly in search results, it affects that page's ability to bring traffic to your site. Depending on the page, it could even impact your website's ability to acquire leads and generate revenue.

That's why checking your HTTP status codes, like every month, is essential.

How do you fix HTTP status error codes?

Fixing HTTP status error codes depends on the error.

A 404 error, for example, may require updating the link to the correct format. In comparison, a 500 error may involve investigating the page for potential mistakes within the code. How you fix your HTTP errors all depends on the error and the page.

Start fixing your HTTP status codes

Maintaining a website takes work, especially if you're working on a large site, like an ecommerce store. When you have a professional development team on your side, though, you can quickly knock out tasks related to website maintenance, like fixing 404 errors and setting up 301 redirects.

At WebFX, we feature a dedicated, U.S.-based development team with experience in:

1. WordPress
2. WooCommerce
3. Magento
4. Shopify
5. And more

Bring their decades of experience to your website by contacting us online or calling us at 888-601-5359 to learn more about our site maintenance services, which include regular security patches, website back-ups, and more!