402 Payment Required
Reserved for future use, but increasingly adopted by APIs to signal a billing, quota or subscription problem blocking the request.
What it means
402 Payment Required was reserved in the original HTTP spec and never formally standardised for a specific flow. Modern APIs (payment providers, metered services) repurpose it to indicate the account needs payment, has hit a paid quota, or lacks an active subscription.
Why it matters
- It gives metered and paid APIs a semantically clear signal that the block is commercial, not technical.
Common mistakes
- Assuming a standard payload — because 402 was never fully standardised, clients must read your documentation for the body shape.
How WebInspect checks this
- WebInspect reports the status and body so a 402 from a metered API is visible in the report.