# When a provider breaks, keep going

> Failover sends a request to another provider when the first one fails. DigitSpace tracks the health of every provider and model, and when a call times out, returns a 429 or a 5xx, the same request goes to the next healthy provider, up to three in all.

Source: https://digitspace.ai/features/failover · Last checked: 2026-10-30

## Which errors fail over

| What the provider returned | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| Timeout or network error | Next provider |
| 429, rate limited | Next provider |
| 500 to 599, server error | Next provider |
| 400 to 499 (except 429), a bad request | Returned to you straight away: another provider won't fix it |

## Health is tracked, not guessed

Every call to a provider is recorded for that provider and model: whether it worked and how long it took. A provider with three failures in a row is marked as failing straight away, without waiting for its success rate to fall.

A provider counts as healthy at a 90% success rate over its last 50 calls. Healthy providers are always tried first; failing ones stay at the back of the list as a last resort.

## What a failed-over request looks like

An "auto" request: the first choice returns a 503, so the same request goes to the next model on the shortlist, and your code just gets the answer. With a named model, the next provider serving that model takes over.

Example: "auto" request; attempt 1 to anthropic / claude-haiku-5-5 returns 503 after 240 ms; attempt 2 to openai / gpt-6-luna returns 200 after 1.4 s. Your code receives one normal answer.

## What you see

- **The answer:** Your code receives one normal response, from whichever provider answered.
- **The provider:** The "x-digitspace-provider" header names it.
- **Every attempt:** Your logs list each attempt with its status and time, so you know when a provider is struggling.

## Questions

### Do I pay for failed attempts?

No. You pay for the attempt that answered.

### Can failover switch to a different model?

With "auto", the shortlist can include more than one model, so yes. With a named model it only moves between that model's providers.

### What if I pinned a provider?

Then there's no other provider to move to, and the provider's error comes back to you.

### Is there an uptime guarantee?

Enterprise contracts include a 99.9% uptime SLA for the gateway.

## Related

- [How it works](https://digitspace.ai/how-it-works)
- [Smart routing](https://digitspace.ai/features/smart-routing)
- [LLM API failover](https://digitspace.ai/learn/llm-failover)
- [Cost tracking](https://digitspace.ai/features/cost-tracking)

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