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DownSpotter

HTTP

What does HTTP 503 mean?

503 Service Unavailable: the server is reachable but told us it cannot handle the request right now.

The site is not fully down

A 503 is an HTTP response. Something — origin, load balancer, or maintenance page — accepted the connection and answered. That is different from a timeout or a DNS failure, where no application response arrives.

Operators use 503 for overload, deployments, and planned maintenance. Retry-After, when present, is a hint to wait. Refreshing immediately in a loop usually makes overload worse.

What you should do

Wait and retry once or twice. If you run the site, check capacity, health checks, and whether a dependency (database, cache, another API) is down. Visitors should not clear caches as a first step — the server already said it is unavailable.

Related: Is it down, or is it just me? · How to check if a website is down · How to fix DNS problems