Can HTTP POST be limitless

Question

I heard that HTTP POST has no specification limit in data size it can be sent by  Is that true or is there just some really high limit

User · Answer

Different IIS web servers can process different amounts of data in the 'header', according to this (now deleted) article; ~~http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/forms/what-is-the-limit-on-form/post-parameters.html~~;

Note that there is no limit on the number of FORM elements you can pass via POST, but only on the aggregate size of all name/value pairs. While GET is limited to as low as 1024 characters, POST data is limited to 2 MB on IIS 4.0, and 128 KB on IIS 5.0. Each name/value is limited to 1024 characters, as imposed by the SGML spec. Of course this does not apply to files uploaded using enctype='multipart/form-data' ... I have had no problems uploading files in the 90 - 100 MB range using IIS 5.0, aside from having to increase the server.scriptTimeout value as well as my patience!

User · Answer

Quite amazing how all answers talk about IIS  as if that were the only web server that mattered  Even back in 2010 when the question was asked  Apache had between 60  and 70  of the market share  Anyway    The HTTP protocol does not specify a limit  The POST method allows sending far more data than the GET method  which is limited by the URL length - about 2KB  The maximum POST request body size is configured on the HTTP server and typically ranges from 1MB to 2GB The HTTP client  browser or other user agent  can have its own limitations  Therefore  the maximum POST body request size is min serverMaximumSize  clientMaximumSize     Here are the POST body sizes for some of the more popular HTTP servers    Ngix  largest web server market share as of April 2019  - default 1MB  no practical maximum  2  63  Apache - maximum 2GB  no default documented IIS - default 28 6MB for the request length  2048 bytes for the query string  maximum undocumented InfluxDB - default  25MB  maximum undocumented

User · Answer

HTTP may not have an upper limit  but webservers may have one  In ASP NET there is a default accept-limit of 4 nbsp MB  but you  the developer webmaster  can change that to be higher or lower

User · Answer

EDIT  2019  This answer is now pretty redundant but there is another answer with more relevant information   It rather depends on the web server and web browser   Internet explorer  All versions  2GB-1 Mozilla Firefox  All versions  2GB-1 IIS  1-5  2GB-1 IIS  6  4GB-1    Although IIS only support 200KB by default  the metabase needs amending to increase this   http   www motobit com help scptutl pa98 htm  The POST method itself does not have any limit on the size of data

User · Answer

POST allows for an arbitrary length of data to be sent to a server  but there are limitations based on timeouts bandwidth etc   I think basically  it s safer to assume that it s not okay to send lots of data

User · Answer

In an application I was developing I ran into what appeared to be a POST limit of about 2KB  It turned out to be that I was accidentally encoding the parameters into the URL instead of passing them in the body  So if you re running into a problem there  there is definitely a very small limit on the size of POST data you can send encoded into the URL

User · Answer

There is no limit according to the HTTP protocol itself  but implementations will have a practical upper limit  I have sent data exceeding 4 GB using POST to Apache  but some servers did have a limit of 4 GB at the time

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