gotchapythonflaskMajor
Anthropic API 500 Internal Server Error on all pages
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anthropic Python SDK, Python 3.10+
internal server errorapi_erroranthropic outagemodel deprecatedclaude api keyrate limit
Error Messages
Internal server error{"type":"error","error":{"type":"api_error","message":"Internal server error"}}api_errorProblem
All pages using Anthropic Claude API return HTTP 500 with {type:error, error:{type:api_error, message:Internal server error}}. Every page that calls client.messages.create() fails simultaneously. This is a server-side Anthropic error, not an application bug.
Solution
- Check https://status.anthropic.com for outages. 2. Verify the model name is still valid (deprecated models return 500). 3. Test API key directly with a minimal script. 4. Check ANTHROPIC_API_KEY env var is set. 5. Check account quota and rate limits. 6. If 500 persists across all models, it is an Anthropic-side issue — wait and retry.
Why
The error format {type:error, error:{type:api_error}} is Anthropic server-side. When ALL pages fail at once, the cause is external (outage, bad key, deprecated model) not a code bug. Common trigger: model name rotation.
Gotchas
- A 500 from Anthropic looks like your server crashed but it is not your code
- Deprecated model names return 500 not 404
- If you hardcode model names they will eventually break
Code Snippets
Quick diagnostic to test if the API key and model work
python3 -c "from anthropic import Anthropic; c = Anthropic(); print(c.messages.create(model=claude-sonnet-4-20250514, max_tokens=10, messages=[{role:user,content:hi}]))"Context
During runtime when any page makes a Claude API call
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