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HTTP headers
HTTP headers let the client and the server pass additional information with an HTTP
request or response. An HTTP header consists of its case-insensitive name followed by a
colon ( : ), then by its value. Whitespace before the value is ignored.
Custom proprietary headers have historically been used with an X- prefix, but this
convention was deprecated in June 2012 because of the inconveniences it caused when
nonstandard fields became standard in RFC 6648 ; others are listed in an IANA registry ,
whose original content was defined in RFC 4229 . IANA also maintains a registry of
proposed new HTTP headers .
Headers can be grouped according to their contexts:
Request headers contain more information about the resource to be fetched, or about
the client requesting the resource.
Response headers hold additional information about the response, like its location or
about the server providing it.
Representation headers contain information about the body of the resource, like its
MIME type, or encoding/compression applied.
Payload headers contain representation-independent information about payload data,
including content length and the encoding used for transport.
Headers can also be grouped according to how proxies handle them:
Connection

Keep-Alive

Proxy-Authenticate

Proxy-Authorization

TE

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Trailer

Transfer-Encoding

Upgrade (see also Protocol upgrade mechanism).

End-to-end headers
These headers must be transmitted to the final recipient of the message: the server for
a request, or the client for a response. Intermediate proxies must retransmit these
headers unmodified and caches must store them.
Hop-by-hop headers
These headers are meaningful only for a single transport-level connection, and must not
be retransmitted by proxies or cached. Note that only hop-by-hop headers may be set
using the Connection header.

Authentication
WWW-Authenticate

Defines the authentication method that should be used to access a resource.

Authorization

Contains the credentials to authenticate a user-agent with a server.

Proxy-Authenticate

Defines the authentication method that should be used to access a resource behind a
proxy server.
Proxy-Authorization

Contains the credentials to authenticate a user agent with a proxy server.

Caching
Age

The time, in seconds, that the object has been in a proxy cache.
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Cache-Control

Directives for caching mechanisms in both requests and responses.

Clear-Site-Data

Clears browsing data (e.g. cookies, storage, cache) associated with the requesting
website.
Expires

The date/time after which the response is considered stale.

Pragma

Implementation-specific header that may have various effects anywhere along the
request-response chain. Used for backwards compatibility with HTTP/1.0 caches where
the Cache-Control header is not yet present.
Warning

General warning information about possible problems.

Client hints
HTTP Client hints are a set of request headers that provide useful information about the
client such as device type and network conditions, and allow servers to optimize what is
served for those conditions.
Servers proactively requests the client hint headers they are interested in from the client
using Accept-CH . The client may then choose to include the requested headers in
subsequent requests.
Accept-CH

Servers can advertise support for Client Hints using the Accept-CH header field or an
equivalent HTML <meta> element with http-equiv attribute.
Accept-CH-Lifetime

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Servers can ask the client to remember the set of Client Hints that the server supports
for a specified period of time, to enable delivery of Client Hints on subsequent requests
to the server's origin.
Critical-CH

Servers use Critical-CH along with Accept-CH to specify that accepted client hints are
also critical client hints.
The different categories of client hints are listed below.
User agent client hints
The UA client hints are request headers that provide information about the user agent, the
platform/architecture it is running on, and user preferences set on the user agent or
platform:
Sec-CH-Prefers-Reduced-Motion

User agent's reduced motion preference setting.

Sec-CH-UA

User agent's branding and version.

Sec-CH-UA-Arch

User agent's underlying platform architecture.

Sec-CH-UA-Bitness

User agent's underlying CPU architecture bitness (for example "64" bit).
Sec-CH-UA-Full-Version

User agent's full semantic version string.

Sec-CH-UA-Full-Version-List

Full version for each brand in the user agent's brand list.

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Sec-CH-UA-Mobile

User agent is running on a mobile device or, more generally, prefers a "mobile" user
experience.
Sec-CH-UA-Model

User agent's device model.

Sec-CH-UA-Platform

User agent's underlying operation system/platform.

Sec-CH-UA-Platform-Version

User agent's underlying operation system version.

Device client hints
Content-DPR

Response header used to confirm the image device to pixel ratio in requests where the
DPR client hint was used to select an image resource.

Device-Memory

Approximate amount of available client RAM memory. This is part of the Device Memory
API.
DPR

Client device pixel ratio (DPR), which is the number of physical device pixels
corresponding to every CSS pixel.
Viewport-Width

A number that indicates the layout viewport width in CSS pixels. The provided pixel
value is a number rounded to the smallest following integer (i.e. ceiling value).
Width

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A number that indicates the desired resource width in physical pixels (i.e. intrinsic size
of an image).
Network client hints
Network client hints allow a server to choose what information is sent based on the user
choice and network bandwidth and latency.
Downlink

Approximate bandwidth of the client's connection to the server, in Mbps. This is part of
the Network Information API.
ECT

The effective connection type ("network profile") that best matches the connection's
latency and bandwidth. This is part of the Network Information API.
RTT

Application layer round trip time (RTT) in milliseconds, which includes the server
processing time. This is part of the Network Information API.
Save-Data

A boolean that indicates the user agent's preference for reduced data usage.

Conditionals
Last-Modified

The last modification date of the resource, used to compare several versions of the
same resource. It is less accurate than ETag , but easier to calculate in some
environments. Conditional requests using If-Modified-Since and If-Unmodified-Since use
this value to change the behavior of the request.
ETag

A unique string identifying the version of the resource. Conditional requests using If-
Match and If-None-Match use this value to change the behavior of the request.

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If-Match

Makes the request conditional, and applies the method only if the stored resource
matches one of the given ETags.
If-None-Match

Makes the request conditional, and applies the method only if the stored resource
doesn't match any of the given ETags. This is used to update caches (for safe requests),
or to prevent uploading a new resource when one already exists.
If-Modified-Since

Makes the request conditional, and expects the resource to be transmitted only if it has
been modified after the given date. This is used to transmit data only when the cache is
out of date.
If-Unmodified-Since

Makes the request conditional, and expects the resource to be transmitted only if it has
not been modified after the given date. This ensures the coherence of a new fragment
of a specific range with previous ones, or to implement an optimistic concurrency
control system when modifying existing documents.
Vary

Determines how to match request headers to decide whether a cached response can be
used rather than requesting a fresh one from the origin server.

Connection management
Connection

Controls whether the network connection stays open after the current transaction
finishes.
Keep-Alive

Controls how long a persistent connection should stay open.

Content negotiation
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Content negotiation headers.

Accept

Informs the server about the types of data that can be sent back.
Accept-Encoding

The encoding algorithm, usually a compression algorithm, that can be used on the
resource sent back.
Accept-Language

Informs the server about the human language the server is expected to send back. This
is a hint and is not necessarily under the full control of the user: the server should
always pay attention not to override an explicit user choice (like selecting a language
from a dropdown).

Controls
Expect

Indicates expectations that need to be fulfilled by the server to properly handle the
request.
Max-Forwards

When using TRACE , indicates the maximum number of hops the request can do before
being reflected to the sender.

Cookies
Cookie

Contains stored HTTP cookies previously sent by the server with the Set-Cookie header.
Set-Cookie

Send cookies from the server to the user-agent.

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CORS
Learn more about CORS here.
Access-Control-Allow-Origin

Indicates whether the response can be shared.

Access-Control-Allow-Credentials

Indicates whether the response to the request can be exposed when the credentials
flag is true.
Access-Control-Allow-Headers

Used in response to a preflight request to indicate which HTTP headers can be used
when making the actual request.
Access-Control-Allow-Methods

Specifies the methods allowed when accessing the resource in response to a preflight
request.
Access-Control-Expose-Headers

Indicates which headers can be exposed as part of the response by listing their names.
Access-Control-Max-Age

Indicates how long the results of a preflight request can be cached.

Access-Control-Request-Headers

Used when issuing a preflight request to let the server know which HTTP headers will
be used when the actual request is made.
Access-Control-Request-Method

Used when issuing a preflight request to let the server know which HTTP method will be
used when the actual request is made.
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Origin

Indicates where a fetch originates from.

Timing-Allow-Origin

Specifies origins that are allowed to see values of attributes retrieved via features of the
Resource Timing API, which would otherwise be reported as zero due to cross-origin
restrictions.

Downloads
Content-Disposition

Indicates if the resource transmitted should be displayed inline (default behavior without
the header), or if it should be handled like a download and the browser should present a
"Save As" dialog.

Message body information

Content-Length

The size of the resource, in decimal number of bytes.

Content-Type

Indicates the media type of the resource.

Content-Encoding

Used to specify the compression algorithm.

Content-Language

Describes the human language(s) intended for the audience, so that it allows a user to
differentiate according to the users' own preferred language.
Content-Location

Indicates an alternate location for the returned data.

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Proxies
Forwarded

Contains information from the client-facing side of proxy servers that is altered or lost
when a proxy is involved in the path of the request.
X-Forwarded-For

Identifies the originating IP addresses of a client connecting to a web server through an

HTTP proxy or a load balancer.
X-Forwarded-Host

Identifies the original host requested that a client used to connect to your proxy or load
balancer.
X-Forwarded-Proto

Identifies the protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) that a client used to connect to your proxy or
load balancer.
Via

Added by proxies, both forward and reverse proxies, and can appear in the request
headers and the response headers.

Redirects
Location

Indicates the URL to redirect a page to.

Refresh

Directs the browser to reload the page or redirect to another. Takes the same value as
the meta element with http-equiv="refresh" .

Request context
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From

Contains an Internet email address for a human user who controls the requesting user
agent.
Host

Specifies the domain name of the server (for virtual hosting), and (optionally) the TCP
port number on which the server is listening.
Referer

The address of the previous web page from which a link to the currently requested page
was followed.
Referrer-Policy

Governs which referrer information sent in the Referer header should be included with
requests made.
User-Agent

Contains a characteristic string that allows the network protocol peers to identify the
application type, operating system, software vendor or software version of the
requesting software user agent. See also the Firefox user agent string reference.

Response context
Allow

Lists the set of HTTP request methods supported by a resource.

Server

Contains information about the software used by the origin server to handle the request.

Range requests
Accept-Ranges

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Indicates if the server supports range requests, and if so in which unit the range can be
expressed.
Range

Indicates the part of a document that the server should return.

If-Range

Creates a conditional range request that is only fulfilled if the given etag or date
matches the remote resource. Used to prevent downloading two ranges from
incompatible version of the resource.
Content-Range

Indicates where in a full body message a partial message belongs.

Security
Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy (COEP)
Allows a server to declare an embedder policy for a given document.
Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy(COOP)
Prevents other domains from opening/controlling a window.
Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy(CORP)
Prevents other domains from reading the response of the resources to which this
header is applied.
Content-Security-Policy(CSP)
Controls resources the user agent is allowed to load for a given page.
Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only

Allows web developers to experiment with policies by monitoring, but not enforcing,
their effects. These violation reports consist of JSON documents sent via an HTTP POST
request to the specified URI.
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Expect-CT

Allows sites to opt in to reporting and/or enforcement of Certificate Transparency

requirements, which prevents the use of misissued certificates for that site from going
unnoticed. When a site enables the Expect-CT header, they are requesting that Chrome
check that any certificate for that site appears in public CT logs.
Origin-Isolation

Provides a mechanism to allow web applications to isolate their origins.

Permissions-Policy

Provides a mechanism to allow and deny the use of browser features in a website's own
frame, and in <iframe> s that it embeds.
(HSTS)
Strict-Transport-Security

Force communication using HTTPS instead of HTTP.

Upgrade-Insecure-Requests

Sends a signal to the server expressing the client's preference for an encrypted and
authenticated response, and that it can successfully handle the upgrade-insecure-
requests directive.

X-Content-Type-Options

Disables MIME sniffing and forces browser to use the type given in Content-Type .
X-Frame-Options (XFO)
Indicates whether a browser should be allowed to render a page in a <frame> , <iframe> ,
<embed> or <object> .

X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies

Specifies if a cross-domain policy file ( crossdomain.xml ) is allowed. The file may define a
policy to grant clients, such as Adobe's Flash Player (now obsolete), Adobe Acrobat,
Microsoft Silverlight (now obsolete), or Apache Flex, permission to handle data across
domains that would otherwise be restricted due to the Same-Origin Policy. See the
Cross-domain Policy File Specification for more information.
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X-Powered-By

May be set by hosting environments or other frameworks and contains information

about them while not providing any usefulness to the application or its visitors. Unset
this header to avoid exposing potential vulnerabilities.
X-XSS-Protection

Enables cross-site scripting filtering.

Fetch metadata request headers
Fetch metadata request headers provides information about the context from which the
request originated. This allows a server to make decisions about whether a request should
be allowed based on where the request came from and how the resource will be used.
Sec-Fetch-Site

It is a request header that indicates the relationship between a request initiator's origin
and its target's origin. It is a Structured Header whose value is a token with possible
values cross-site , same-origin , same-site , and none .
Sec-Fetch-Mode

It is a request header that indicates the request's mode to a server. It is a Structured

Header whose value is a token with possible values cors , navigate , no-cors , same-
origin , and websocket .

Sec-Fetch-User

It is a request header that indicates whether or not a navigation request was triggered
by user activation. It is a Structured Header whose value is a boolean so possible values
are ?0 for false and ?1 for true.
Sec-Fetch-Dest

It is a request header that indicates the request's destination to a server. It is a

Structured Header whose value is a token with possible values audio , audioworklet ,
document , embed , empty , font , image , manifest , object , paintworklet , report , script ,

serviceworker , sharedworker , style , track , video , worker , and xslt .

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Service-Worker-Navigation-Preload

A request header sent in preemptive request to fetch() a resource during service

worker boot. The value, which is set with NavigationPreloadManager.setHeaderValue() , can
be used to inform a server that a different resource should be returned than in a normal
fetch() operation.

Server-sent events
Last-Event-ID

TBD
NEL

Defines a mechanism that enables developers to declare a network error reporting

policy.
Ping-From

TBD
Ping-To

TBD
Report-To

Used to specify a server endpoint for the browser to send warning and error reports to.

Transfer coding
Transfer-Encoding

Specifies the form of encoding used to safely transfer the resource to the user.
TE

Specifies the transfer encodings the user agent is willing to accept.

Trailer

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Allows the sender to include additional fields at the end of chunked message.

WebSockets
Sec-WebSocket-Key

TBD
Sec-WebSocket-Extensions

TBD
Sec-WebSocket-Accept

TBD
Sec-WebSocket-Protocol

TBD
Sec-WebSocket-Version

TBD

Other
Accept-Push-Policy

A client can express the desired push policy for a request by sending an Accept-Push-
Policy header field in the request.
Accept-Signature

A client can send the Accept-Signature header field to indicate intention to take
advantage of any available signatures and to indicate what kinds of signatures it
supports.
Alt-Svc

Used to list alternate ways to reach this service.

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Date

Contains the date and time at which the message was originated.
Early-Data

Indicates that the request has been conveyed in TLS early data.
Large-Allocation

Tells the browser that the page being loaded is going to want to perform a large
allocation.
Link

The Link entity-header field provides a means for serializing one or more links in
HTTP headers. It is semantically equivalent to the HTML <link> element.
Push-Policy

A Push-Policy defines the server behavior regarding push when processing a request.
Retry-After

Indicates how long the user agent should wait before making a follow-up request.
Signature

The Signature header field conveys a list of signatures for an exchange, each one
accompanied by information about how to determine the authority of and refresh that
signature.
Signed-Headers

The Signed-Headers header field identifies an ordered list of response header fields to
include in a signature.
Server-Timing

Communicates one or more metrics and descriptions for the given request-response
cycle.

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Service-Worker-Allowed

Used to remove the path restriction by including this header in the response of the
Service Worker script .
SourceMap

Links generated code to a source map .

Upgrade

The relevant RFC document for the Upgrade header field is RFC 9110, section 7.8 . The
standard establishes rules for upgrading or changing to a different protocol on the
current client, server, transport protocol connection. For example, this header standard
allows a client to change from HTTP 1.1 to WebSocket, assuming the server decides to
acknowledge and implement the Upgrade header field. Neither party is required to
accept the terms specified in the Upgrade header field. It can be used in both client and
server headers. If the Upgrade header field is specified, then the sender MUST also
send the Connection header field with the upgrade option specified. For details on the
Connection header field please see section 7.6.1 of the aforementioned RFC .
X-DNS-Prefetch-Control

Controls DNS prefetching, a feature by which browsers proactively perform domain

name resolution on both links that the user may choose to follow as well as URLs for
items referenced by the document, including images, CSS, JavaScript, and so forth.
X-Firefox-Spdy

TBD
X-Pingback

TBD
X-Requested-With

TBD
X-Robots-Tag

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The X-Robots-Tag HTTP header is used to indicate how a web page is to be indexed
within public search engine results. The header is effectively equivalent to <meta
name="robots" content="…"> .

Contributing
You can help by writing new entries or improving the existing ones.

See also
Wikipedia page on List of HTTP headers
IANA registry
HTTP Working Group

This page was last modified on Apr 15, 2023 by MDN contributors.

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