200 OK
The standard success response. The request was received, understood, and fulfilled. The response body contains the requested resource for GET requests, or the result of the action for POST/PUT/PATCH. This is what you want for virtually all successful operations.
What can I do?
- No action needed — this is an informational or success response, not an error.
How to debug & fix
- Return 200 for successful GET, PUT, PATCH requests that return data
- Use 201 instead of 200 when a new resource has been created
- Use 204 when the request succeeded but there's no body to return
- Confirm response body schema with integration tests to prevent silent regressions.
Code Example
// Express
app.get('/users/:id', async (req, res) => {
const user = await User.findById(req.params.id);
res.status(200).json(user); // or just res.json(user)
});Related Status Codes
How HTTP Status Codes Work
Every HTTP response carries a three-digit status code that tells the client — browser, API consumer, or search-engine crawler — exactly what happened. The first digit defines the class: 1xx informational (request in progress), 2xx success, 3xx redirection, 4xx client error (bad request, missing auth, not found), and 5xx server failure.
Status codes are standardised in RFC 9110 (HTTP Semantics, 2022). Extensions like WebDAV (RFC 4918) and rate-limit headers (RFC 6585) added codes beyond the core set. When a client receives an unrecognised code, the rule is to treat it as the generic x00 of its class.
Why the Right Code Matters
Semantically correct codes help search engines index accurately (301 passes link equity; 410 removes pages faster than 404), allow API clients to implement correct retry logic (429 + Retry-After, 503 + Retry-After), and let monitoring systems distinguish bugs (500) from load issues (503) from auth failures (401/403).
Looking up a different status code? The full reference covers all HTTP codes with causes, fix guides, and copyable code examples for Node.js and Python.
Browse the full HTTP Status Code reference →