524 A Timeout Occurred
unofficial · Cloudflare
Cloudflare connected to the origin, but it didn't send an HTTP response within 100 seconds.
524 is Cloudflare's gateway timeout. The TCP connection succeeded and the request was sent, but the origin took longer than Cloudflare's proxy timeout — 100 seconds on most plans — to start responding. The work may still finish on your server; Cloudflare just stopped waiting.
| Class | Unofficial (Cloudflare) |
|---|---|
| Retry? | With backoff (idempotent requests only) |
| Cacheable by default | No — only with explicit Cache-Control |
| Response body | Allowed |
| Defined in | Cloudflare docs — Troubleshooting Cloudflare 5XX errors |
Example response
HTTP/1.1 524 A Timeout Occurred
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 30
{"error":"A Timeout Occurred"}Common causes
- Long-running requests: exports, reports, heavy queries.
- An overloaded origin queueing requests.
How to fix it
- Move long work to a background job and poll for the result (the 202 Accepted pattern).
- Speed up the slow endpoint with better queries or caching.
- Serve long-running operations from a hostname that isn't proxied through Cloudflare.
- Enterprise plans can raise the timeout.
Check what a URL returns
Print just the status line from the command line, or check a whole list of URLs at once, with their response headers, in the HTTP Status Checker.
curl -sI https://example.com/your-path | head -n 1
Frequently asked questions
How long is Cloudflare's timeout?
100 seconds for the origin to start responding, on most plans. Enterprise customers can raise it.
Related status codes