205 Reset Content
The request succeeded and the client should clear the form that sent it, ready for another entry.
At a glance
- Status code
- 205 Reset Content
- Class
- 2xx, success, the request was received and accepted
- Defined in
- RFC 9110
- Cacheable by default
- by explicit headers only
- Response body
- None.
In detail
205 is 204 plus an instruction: reset the document view. It was designed for data-entry screens where the operator submits one record after another and the form should empty itself between them.
Browsers never implemented the reset behaviour, so in practice 205 behaves exactly like 204 and the clearing has to be done in the client anyway.
Prefer 204 unless you control both ends and have agreed what 205 means. The distinction buys nothing on the open web.
Examples
HTTP/1.1 205 Reset Content
Date: Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:14:02 GMTThings that catch people out
- Like 204, a body is not allowed. Frameworks that always serialise a response object will violate this without warning.
- No mainstream browser resets anything on 205, so any behaviour you see is your own code.
Try it: HTTP Request Builder
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Related HTTP status codes
All http status codes →204 No Content
The request succeeded and there is deliberately nothing to send back. The browser stays on the current page.
200 OK
The request succeeded. What the body contains depends on the method: a GET returns the resource, a POST returns the result of the action.
303 See Other
The result of the request is at another URL, and the client should fetch it with GET regardless of the original method.
206 Partial Content
The server is returning part of the resource because the request carried a Range header. This is what makes resumable downloads and video seeking work.
207 Multi-Status
A WebDAV response carrying several independent status codes at once, one for each resource the request touched.
208 Already Reported
Inside a WebDAV multi-status response, this member was already listed earlier and its properties are not repeated.
Tools for this
- HTTP Request Builder Free online HTTP request builder - build and test HTTP requests with custom headers and body
- HTTP Headers Checker Free online HTTP headers checker - view HTTP response headers for any URL