Idempotency

1-minute read updated Jul. 28, 2025

Standards to help reduce duplicate transmissions

Idempotency is a method particular to REST APIs with HTTP/HTTPS protocols that makes sure the result does not change even if applied multiple times. If you submit multiple identical requests sequentially, only the first request would get a response that does not change with the subsequent, incoming requests.

Standard HTTP methods and nature of idempotency

Method	Is the method idempotent	Does it modify the server's state?
HEAD	Yes	No
OPTIONS	Yes	No
GET	Yes	No
POST	No	Yes
PUT	Yes	Yes
PATCH	No	Yes
DELETE	Yes	Yes