204 No Content

What 204 means

The request worked and the server has nothing to send back. Common for DELETE, for PUT updates, and for beacon or heartbeat endpoints.

A 204 must not include a body; some frameworks send one anyway and clients then fail to parse an "empty" JSON response. Browsers do not navigate on a 204, which is why it is sometimes used for form posts that should leave the page as it is.

Common causes

• A successful DELETE, an update that returns nothing, or a fire-and-forget POST.

How to fix it

• If a client errors with "unexpected end of JSON input", it is parsing the empty body; check the status before parsing.

What it looks like

A typical response:

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:12:01 GMT

The same event in an nginx access log (the status is the number after the request line):

203.0.113.7 - - [10/Sep/2026:10:12:01 +0000] "GET /api/orders HTTP/1.1" 204 0 "-" "Mozilla/5.0"

Check it with curl

-i prints the status line and headers, and -w '%{http_code}' prints only the number, which is handy in scripts and health checks. Replace the URL with yours:

curl -sS -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code} %{time_total}s\n' https://example.com/api/orders

Compare what curl sees with what the browser sees. A different status from the same URL usually means a cache, a CDN edge or a cookie is in the way.

Investigating a run of 204s? Paste the log excerpt into Log Share to get line numbers, highlighting and an expiring link for whoever is on call with you.

Related status codes

• 200OK: The request succeeded and the response carries the result.
• 205Reset Content: success, and the client should reset the form or view.
• 404Not Found: The server found no resource at that URL.

FAQ