api_error

What the error looks like

{
  "type": "error",
  "error": {
    "type": "api_error",
    "message": "Internal server error"
  }
}

When it happens

• Anthropic infrastructure issues or active incidents
• Very occasional transient failures during model serving
• During Anthropic deployments or scaling events
• Rarely: edge cases in your request that trigger an unhandled server error

Fix: Retry with backoff

import anthropic
import time

client = anthropic.Anthropic(max_retries=5)   # SDK handles it

# Manual retry if you need full control:
def call_with_retry(messages, max_attempts=5):
    delay = 5
    for attempt in range(max_attempts):
        try:
            return client.messages.create(
                model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
                max_tokens=1024,
                messages=messages,
            )
        except anthropic.APIStatusError as e:
            if e.status_code == 500 and attempt < max_attempts - 1:
                print(f"api_error, retrying in {delay}s...")
                time.sleep(delay)
                delay = min(delay * 2, 120)
            else:
                raise

Check the Anthropic status page

If 500 errors persist (more than 5 minutes), check for active incidents:

import requests

def check_anthropic_status():
    """Check if Anthropic has an active incident."""
    r = requests.get("https://status.anthropic.com/api/v2/status.json", timeout=5)
    data = r.json()
    status = data["status"]["indicator"]   # none, minor, major, critical
    desc = data["status"]["description"]
    print(f"Anthropic status: {status} — {desc}")
    return status == "none"   # True if all good

Subscribe to status.anthropic.com for email/webhook incident alerts.

FAQ