OpenAI 500 Server Error

Most likely causes

1. 1.Transient internal error
2. 2.Ongoing incident

Fix checklist

• ✓Retry with backoff (official SDKs default to 2 retries)
• ✓Capture the x-request-id header for support
• ✓Check status.openai.com for incidents

Retry guidance

Exponential backoff: 0.5s, 1s, 2s with jitter, max 3 attempts.

// Retry 500 with exponential backoff + full jitter.
async function callWithBackoff(payload: unknown, maxAttempts = 5) {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt < maxAttempts; attempt++) {
    const res = await fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", {
      method: "POST",
      headers: {
        "content-type": "application/json",
        Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY}`,
      },
      body: JSON.stringify(payload),
    });
    if (res.status !== 500) return res;
    // Honor Retry-After when present; otherwise exponential backoff, capped at 32s.
    const retryAfter = Number(res.headers.get("retry-after"));
    const base = Number.isFinite(retryAfter) && retryAfter > 0
      ? retryAfter * 1000
      : Math.min(1000 * 2 ** attempt, 32_000);
    await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, base * (0.5 + Math.random() * 0.5)));
  }
  throw new Error("OpenAI 500: still failing after backoff — check https://status.openai.com");
}

Provider status page: status.openai.com