HTTP 402 Payment Required, explained for developers: the spec's history, request and response examples, server snippets, and real implementations in the wild.
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What Http 402 Does
HTTP 402 is the status code the web reserved for payments and barely used for thirty years. HTTP402.net explains where it came from and how developers are putting it to work.
Where 402 came from, why HTTP/1.1 reserved it, and why it sat unused for decades.
Step-by-step walkthroughs for returning and handling a 402 in real services.
Annotated wire examples: headers, payment-required bodies, and retry flows.
A running log of APIs and services actually returning 402 today.
Copy-paste 402 handlers for common frameworks and edge runtimes.
Where 402 sits in the 4xx family and how it differs from 401 and 403.
How Http 402 Works
Start with the primer: what 402 means, its history, and its place in the 4xx family.
Study annotated request/response examples to see a payment-required flow end to end.
Use the framework snippets to return a correct 402 from your own service.
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It is the Payment Required status code: a server's standard way of saying this resource costs money. The spec reserved it for future use, and that future is arriving.
No. It is an educational reference about the status code itself — nothing here processes payments or promises any token or return.
401 means authenticate first, 403 means never, and 402 means pay first — authentication may be fine, but the resource requires payment.
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