HTTP 206 — Partial Content

2xx Success

What it means

The server is returning only part of the resource because the client sent a Range header. Used by video players and download managers.

What to do about it

Nothing to fix. If range requests are failing, check that a proxy or CDN is not stripping Range and Accept-Ranges.

Where it sits

206 belongs to the 2xx family: The request was received, understood and accepted.

HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content

Checking it yourself

# see the status code and headers only
curl -sI https://example.com/path

# follow redirects and print each hop
curl -sIL -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{url_effective}\n" https://example.com/path

# JavaScript
const r = await fetch(url);
console.log(r.status, r.statusText);

How this code behaves

Returning 206 correctly

# nginx
return 206;

# Express
res.status(206).json({ error: 'Partial Content' });

# Go
w.WriteHeader(206)

# Python (Flask)
return jsonify(error='Partial Content'), 206;

Frequently asked questions

Other 2xx codes

• 200 OK
• 201 Created
• 202 Accepted
• 204 No Content

All HTTP status codes