< HTTP/1.1 204 No Content

TL;DR: 204 No Content means the request succeeded and there is deliberately no body. It is the usual answer to DELETE, to PUT/PATCH when you do not echo the resource, and to CORS preflights. It cannot carry content, so a 204 with a body is a bug.

What it means

DELETE /api/items/42 HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example.com

HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:00:00 GMT

RFC 9110 section 15.3.5: a 204 ends after the header section. Servers must not send Content-Length or Transfer-Encoding on a 204 (RFC 9110 section 8.6 and RFC 9112 section 6.3). Clients with a page open stay on it; a browser form submission that returns 204 leaves the user on the current page without navigating, which can be a useful way to handle “save” actions that do not need a new view.

When to use it

• DELETE that succeeded.
• PUT or PATCH when the client already has the new state (add an ETag so it can track the new version).
• CORS preflight (OPTIONS) responses; most CORS middleware sends 204, and browsers accept any 2xx.
• Beacons and analytics endpoints (navigator.sendBeacon ignores the response, so 204 saves bytes).
• Not for GET of an existing resource that happens to be empty; return 200 with [] or {}, since clients treat a missing body as a parsing case.

Common bugs

• response.json() throws on 204. fetch(...).then(r => r.json()) fails with SyntaxError: Unexpected end of JSON input. Check r.status === 204 before parsing. Axios returns data: ''.
• Body written anyway. Node’s http module and Express drop the body on a 204, so the client never sees it. On a raw socket, a stray body would be parsed as the start of the next response.
• 204 in place of 404. A 204 on a GET for a missing item hides the error. Use 404.

Implementation

Express

app.delete('/api/items/:id', async (req, res) => {
  await db.items.delete(req.params.id)
  res.sendStatus(204)
})

Flask

@app.delete("/api/items/<int:item_id>")
def delete_item(item_id):
    db.delete(item_id)
    return "", 204

Go

w.WriteHeader(http.StatusNoContent)

nginx

location = /beacon {
    return 204;
}

Reproduce with curl

curl -si -X DELETE https://api.example.com/api/items/42
# HTTP/2 204
# (no body, no content-length)

204 vs 200 vs 201 vs 205

Code	Body	Meaning
200	Yes	Success with a result
201	Usual	New resource created
204	Never	Success, nothing to show
205	Never	Success, tell the UI to reset the form or view

Related

• 200 OK
• 201 Created
• DELETE method
• OPTIONS method

See also the comparison 200 vs 201 vs 204: choosing the right success code for create, read, update and delete.