500 Internal Server Error JSON response example

Last updated 2026-05-20

When to use this

Use this when something blew up server-side. Include a traceId your support team can correlate with logs, and never leak internals (no stack trace).

Example JSON

Generic "something went wrong" payload with a correlation id.

{
  "status": 500,
  "error": "Internal Server Error",
  "message": "Something went wrong on our end. Please try again shortly.",
  "code": "internal_error",
  "traceId": "8f0e3b5a-2d61-4f3a-9c0e-7d2e1d5b4a91",
  "timestamp": "2026-05-20T18:42:10.302Z"
}

Request examples

const res = await fetch('https://jsonexamples.com/http/500/Internal+server+error');
if (!res.ok) {
  const err = await res.json();
  console.error(res.status, err.message);
}

curl -i https://jsonexamples.com/http/500/Internal+server+error

import requests

r = requests.get('https://jsonexamples.com/http/500/Internal+server+error')
if r.status_code >= 400:
    print(r.status_code, r.json())

Try the live endpoint

Click below to call /http/500/Internal+server+error from your browser.

// click the button to populate this block

Common variations

Upstream-dependency error

{
  "status": 502,
  "error": "Bad Gateway",
  "message": "Upstream search service did not respond",
  "code": "upstream_unavailable",
  "upstream": "meilisearch"
}

Convert this JSON

Generated starting points for TypeScript, JSON Schema, and Zod. Refine before shipping to production.

export interface 500ServerError {
  "status": number;
  "error": string;
  "message": string;
  "code": string;
  "traceId": string;
  "timestamp": string;
}

{
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#",
  "title": "500ServerError",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "status": {
      "type": "integer"
    },
    "error": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "message": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "code": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "traceId": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "timestamp": {
      "type": "string"
    }
  },
  "required": [
    "status",
    "error",
    "message",
    "code",
    "traceId",
    "timestamp"
  ],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

import { z } from 'zod';

export const 500ServerErrorSchema = z.object({
  status: z.number(),
  error: z.string(),
  message: z.string(),
  code: z.string(),
  traceId: z.string(),
  timestamp: z.string()
});
export type 500ServerError = z.infer<typeof 500ServerErrorSchema>;