EC
413
HTTPERRORNotable4xx Client ErrorHIGH confidence

Payload Too Large

Production Risk

Moderate. If the limit is set too low, it can prevent legitimate user actions. If set too high, it can expose the server to denial-of-service attacks.

What this means

The request entity is larger than limits defined by the server. The server might close the connection or return a 'Retry-After' header field.

Why it happens
  1. 1A user tries to upload a file that exceeds the server's configured upload size limit.
  2. 2A client sends a JSON payload that is larger than the maximum allowed request body size.
  3. 3This is a protective measure to prevent resource exhaustion on the server.
How to reproduce

A user tries to upload a 100MB video file to a server that has a 20MB upload limit.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
POST /upload HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Length: 104857600

expected output

HTTP/1.1 413 Payload Too Large

Fix 1

Increase Server's Limit

WHEN You control the server and larger payloads are legitimate.

Increase Server's Limit
// Nginx example in nginx.conf
client_max_body_size 100M;

Why this works

Server Configuration

Fix 2

Send a Smaller Payload

WHEN You are the client.

Send a Smaller Payload
Compress the data, reduce the image size, or use a chunked upload mechanism.

Why this works

Client-Side Logic

Version notes

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