413 Request Entity Too Large (nginx) — how to fix

413 Request Entity Too Large (nginx)

Quick fix: Add client_max_body_size 50M; to the http, server or location block, then sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx. For PHP also raise upload_max_filesize and post_max_size.

What it means

nginx rejects request bodies larger than client_max_body_size, which defaults to 1 MB. Any upload bigger than that gets a 413 before it reaches your app.

Fix in nginx

server {
    client_max_body_size 50M;
    ...
}

You can put it in http { } (all sites), server { } (one site) or location { } (one path). Then:

sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

0 disables the check entirely. Usually not a good idea on public servers.

PHP / WordPress: raise PHP's limits too

In php.ini (find it with php --ini, or the FPM one in /etc/php/*/fpm/php.ini):

upload_max_filesize = 50M
post_max_size = 55M

Then sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm. When PHP's limit is hit, WordPress shows "The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive" instead of a 413.

Other layers with their own limits

• Node/Express: express.json({ limit: '10mb' }); multer has limits.fileSize.
• Django: DATA_UPLOAD_MAX_MEMORY_SIZE.
• Kubernetes ingress-nginx: annotation nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: 50m.
• Cloudflare: the free plan caps proxied request bodies at 100 MB (larger plans allow more).
• Apache: LimitRequestBody.

Last updated 2026-10-27.