403 Forbidden

The website is there, but it won't show you this page. Either the page is meant to be private, or the site's security settings have blocked you by mistake.

What you'll see

Any browser
403 Forbidden, Access denied, You don't have permission to access this resource, or a security service's page (like Cloudflare's) saying you've been blocked.

If you're visiting a site

  1. Check the address: the page may be private, or you may need to log in first.
  2. Turn off any VPN (an app that routes your connection through another computer, often for privacy or work). Security services sometimes block VPN addresses.
  3. Try another network or device. If it works there, your network's address may be blocked.
  4. If you think you should have access, tell the business, with the time it happened.

Stuck, and someone's helping you? Send them your details with My setup, or a screenshot and the error messages with PageKiwi for Chrome.

If it's your site

  1. Was the page meant to be public? If so, your web person needs to check its permissions on the server.
  2. If a security plugin or service (Wordfence, Cloudflare and the like) blocked a real visitor, look it up in its log and allow them.
  3. A 403 on the whole site, just after moving host or changing files, usually means file permissions were set wrongly. Your web host can fix them.

Tools that help: Link Check, Site health.