413 Content Too Large

The request body is larger than the server is willing to process.

413 at a glance

Code: 413
Name: Content Too Large
Class: 4xx Client error
Status: IANA-registered standard code
Defined in: RFC 9110, Section 15.5.14
Cacheable by default: No by default. Caches store it only when the response carries explicit freshness (Cache-Control max-age, s-maxage or Expires).

What 413 means

413 Content Too Large (formerly "Payload Too Large" and "Request Entity Too Large") means the body exceeds a server limit. If the limit is temporary, the server can send Retry-After. Many servers close the connection after a 413 because the rest of the body would otherwise have to be read.

What typically causes a 413

nginx client_max_body_size, which defaults to only 1 MB ("413 Request Entity Too Large").
Apache LimitRequestBody; PHP upload_max_filesize/post_max_size (PHP usually reports these differently, but proxies return 413).
Cloudflare upload limits by plan (100 MB on Free and Pro).
AWS API Gateway (10 MB payload limit) and Lambda payload limits.
Ingress controllers: ingress-nginx annotation nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size.

Fix it on the server

Raise the limit at every layer: CDN, load balancer, ingress, web server and application framework.
For large files, use direct-to-storage uploads (S3 presigned URLs) or chunked/resumable uploads.

Fix it as a client or visitor

Compress or split the upload; for files, use the service's multipart or resumable upload API.

Headers that go with 413

Header	Role
`Retry-After`	Only if the condition is temporary.
`Connection`	Often `close`.

Example response

HTTP/1.1 413 Content Too Large
Server: nginx
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: close

<title>413 Request Entity Too Large</title>