# not_ready

> The service is running but its database did not answer the readiness check.

Source: https://tickwire.io/docs/errors/not_ready/

HTTP 503.

**Likely causes:**

- The database did not answer within the check's time limit (`database: timeout`).
- The database check failed (`database: down`).

**What to do:** Retry after a few seconds. Status checks use this to tell a database outage from a stopped service.

**Retry:** Yes. Nothing happened (or it was a read), so repeat it, after `Retry-After` when present.

Listed under [Outages and timeouts](https://tickwire.io/docs/errors/#outages-and-timeouts) in [Errors](https://tickwire.io/docs/errors/). Send the error's `requestId` to support and we can find the request.