Accepted

The request was received but not yet acted upon. Processing happens later.

202 Accepted means the server queued the work but hasn't done it yet. It's the natural response for async jobs: video encoding, report generation, bulk imports. A good 202 tells the client how to check on the job later, usually via a status URL in the body or a Location header. Keep in mind the request being accepted says nothing about whether the job itself will eventually succeed.

POST /api/exports HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example.com

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Content-Type: application/json

{"job": "/api/jobs/8931", "status": "queued"}