What it means
An April Fools' joke from the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol: the server is a teapot and refuses to brew coffee. Some sites use it as a joke or to block bots.
Common causes
- Easter eggs in APIs and frameworks
- Bot or scraper blocking that answers with 418
- Test endpoints
How to fix it
As a client or visitor
If you hit it unexpectedly, you may have been flagged as a bot; slow down, send a normal User-Agent and check the site's terms.
As the site or API owner
Do not use 418 for real errors. RFC 9110 reserves the code so it is never reassigned.
Example response
HTTP/1.1
HTTP/1.1 418 I'm a teapot
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:30:00 GMT
Server: nginx
Content-Type: application/problem+json
{
"type": "about:blank",
"title": "I'm a teapot",
"status": 418,
"detail": "This server refuses to brew coffee."
}Specification
FAQ
› Is 418 a real status code?
It comes from a joke RFC (2324). It is reserved in the IANA registry and supported by many libraries, but it has no real meaning.
› Why did a website return 418 to my scraper?
Some anti-bot systems use 418 as a playful block response.