HTTP 200 OK — Meaning, Causes & How to Fix
The request succeeded. The meaning depends on the method (GET returns the resource, POST the result).
- Code
- 200
- Name
- OK
- Class
- 2xx Success
- Specification
- RFC 9110 §15.3.1
- Cacheable by default
- Yes — heuristically cacheable by default
What HTTP 200 means
200 OK is the standard success response. For GET the body is the requested resource; for POST it is the result of the action; for HEAD it is the same headers with no body. It is the status every indexable page should return.
Common causes
- A normal, successful request.
- An error page that was wrongly configured to return 200 (a “soft 404”).
How to fix it
For site owners
- Make sure real pages return 200 and missing pages return 404 or 410 — never a 200 “not found” page.
- Use 201 for newly created resources and 204 when there is no body, so API clients get precise signals.
For visitors & developers
- Check the body even on 200: some APIs wrap errors inside a 200 response.
SEO impact
Only pages that return 200 can be indexed. A page that says “not found” but returns 200 is reported as a soft 404 in Google Search Console and is usually left out of the index.
Example 200 response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Cache-Control: max-age=3600
Content-Length: 5120Related status codes
Check or look up another code
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Open HTTP Status Codes tool →All status codesFrequently asked questions
What does HTTP 200 mean?
HTTP 200 OK is a 2xx Success status code. The request succeeded. The meaning depends on the method (GET returns the resource, POST the result).
What is a soft 404?
A page that tells visitors it does not exist but returns 200 OK. Search engines detect these and usually do not index them. Return a real 404 or 410 instead.
Which specification defines 200?
It is defined in RFC 9110 §15.3.1.
Is a 200 response cacheable?
Yes. 200 is one of the codes RFC 9110 §15.1 lets caches store heuristically, so it can be reused without explicit caching headers. Send Cache-Control to control how long.