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Troubleshooting

Proxy error codes explained

When the residential or mobile gateway cannot serve a request, it answers with one of nine codes instead of the page, and nothing is charged. Two of them mean "fix your request", two mean "your account needs an action", the rest mean "retry". ISP and datacenter proxies never answer with a code: they close the connection instead (see the empty-reply article).

Written By Carmine Cella

Last updated 1 day ago

When the residential or mobile gateway cannot serve a request, it answers with one of nine codes instead of the page, and nothing is charged. Two of them mean "fix your request", two mean "your account needs an action", the rest mean "retry". ISP and datacenter proxies never answer with a code: they close the connection instead (see the empty-reply article).

CodeWhat it meansWhat to do
402 Payment RequiredThe plan these credentials belong to has no traffic left: Data left on its page is 0. Residential and mobile are separate plans with separate traffic.Click Buy data on the plan page, or switch on Auto top-up there.
406 Not AcceptableThe username is malformed: a missing parameter, a country code that is too long, a TTL that is not a number or out of range, a session id that is too long.Compare the username with the targeting article; country is two letters, ttl is 1 to 1440.
407 Proxy Authentication RequiredWrong username or password, or a password that was reset.Generate the line again on the plan page and copy it whole. The username must start with network-residential or pool-mobile, and the credentials must belong to that plan.
410 GoneA problem with the device serving the request.Retry. With a sticky session, the next request with the same id gets a new IP.
417 Expectation FailedThe location does not exist or is spelled differently from the code the gateway expects.Use the codes from the Region and City dropdowns in the Generate panel, or from the User API: region-england, city-newyorkcity.
421 Misdirected RequestThe location exists but has no IP available right now.Widen one step: city to region, region to country, or add a second country.
423 LockedThe target or port is restricted.See the restricted targets rules; verified accounts can ask for the restriction to be lifted.
500 / 503A fault on our side; engineers are paged automatically.Retry with backoff; check status.datafuel.ai if it persists.

Is it the gateway or the target?

Responses from the gateway carry the header X-Datafuel-Gateway: 1. A 403, 429 or 503 without that header came from the website you asked for: the request went through, the site refused it, and it counts as traffic like any other. For those, change the targeting (another city, a sticky session) or move the target to the Unlocker API.

Retry rules

  • 410, 421, 500, 503: safe to retry, with exponential backoff starting at one second.
  • 406, 407, 417: fix the request first; the same request gives the same answer.
  • 402, 423: your account needs an action before any retry can succeed.

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