The Retry-After response HTTP header indicates how long the user agent should wait before making a follow-up request. There are three main cases this header is used:
- When sent with a
503(Service Unavailable) response, this indicates how long the service is expected to be unavailable. - When sent with a
429(Too Many Requests) response, this indicates how long to wait before making a new request. - When sent with a redirect response, such as
301(Moved Permanently), this indicates the minimum time that the user agent is asked to wait before issuing the redirected request.
| Header type | Response header |
|---|---|
| Forbidden header name | no |