Originally published at claudeguide.io/claude-api-error-handling-production

Claude API Error Handling: Production Patterns with Retry Logic

Claude API errors fall into two categories: retriable (529 overload, 529 rate limit) and non-retriable (400 bad request, 401 authentication, 404 not found). The production pattern is: retry 529 errors with exponential backoff + jitter, fail fast on 4xx errors, and wrap all API calls in a circuit breaker for sustained outages. This guide covers every error type and provides ready-to-use Python and TypeScript implementations.

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Error codes reference

HTTP Status	Error Type	Retriable?	Action
400	invalid_request_error	No	Fix your request
401	authentication_error	No	Check API key
403	permission_error	No	Check model access
404	not_found_error	No	Check model name
422	invalid_request_error	No	Fix request body
429	rate_limit_error	Yes	Exponential backoff
500	api_error	Yes	Retry with backoff
529	overload_error	Yes	Retry with longer backoff

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The baseline retry pattern (Python)

python
import anthropic
import time
import random
from typing import Optional

client = anthropic.Anthropic()

def call_with_retry(
    model: str,
    messages: list,
    max_tokens: int = 1024,
    max_retries: int = 5,
    base_delay: float = 1.0,
) -

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