navan-common-errors

Navan Common Errors

Overview

Diagnose and resolve Navan API errors using targeted fix procedures. All errors surface as raw HTTP status codes since Navan has no public SDK — this guide covers 401, 403, 404, 429, 500, and 503 with curl-based diagnostics.

Purpose: Identify the root cause of a Navan API error and apply the correct fix.

Prerequisites

• Navan API credentials configured (see navan-install-auth)
• curl and jq available in your terminal
• Environment variables set: NAVAN_CLIENT_ID, NAVAN_CLIENT_SECRET, NAVAN_BASE_URL

Instructions

Error 401 — Unauthorized (Invalid or Expired OAuth Token)

Root causes:

1. OAuth token has expired (tokens have a limited expires_in window)
2. client_secret was rotated in the Navan dashboard but not updated in .env
3. Malformed Authorization header (missing Bearer prefix)
4. Token from a different Navan organization

Diagnostic steps:

# 1. Verify credentials can still obtain a token
curl -s -X POST https://api.navan.com/ta-auth/oauth/token \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=$NAVAN_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=$NAVAN_CLIENT_SECRET" \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print('TOKEN OK' if 'access_token' in d else f'FAIL: {d}')"

# 2. Check if existing token is expired
echo "Token var length: ${#NAVAN_TOKEN}"

Fix: Re-run the token exchange. If that also returns 401, regenerate credentials at Admin > Travel admin > Settings > Integrations > Navan API Credentials.

Error 403 — Forbidden (Insufficient Permissions)

Root causes:

1. API credentials lack required scopes for the endpoint
2. Account is on Business tier but endpoint requires Enterprise
3. Expense Transaction API not enabled (requires separate Navan support request)
4. User role lacks admin permissions for admin-only endpoints

Diagnostic steps:

# Test the bookings endpoint
TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST https://api.navan.com/ta-auth/oauth/token \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=$NAVAN_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=$NAVAN_CLIENT_SECRET" \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['access_token'])")

echo "Bookings:" && curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  "https://api.navan.com/v1/bookings?page=0&size=1" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Fix: If the bookings endpoint returns 403, your credentials lack the required scope. Contact Navan support. If the Expense API returns 403, it requires separate enablement — request it through your Navan account manager.

Error 404 — Not Found (Invalid Endpoint)

Root causes:

1. Typo in endpoint path
2. Using a legacy or reverse-engineered endpoint that no longer exists
3. Referencing an endpoint not available on your Navan tier

Known valid endpoints (from Airbyte connector source):

Endpoint	Method	Description
/ta-auth/oauth/token	POST	OAuth token exchange (client_credentials)
/v1/bookings	GET	Booking records (paginated with page + size)

Note: Older references to endpoints like /get_user_trips, /get_admin_trips, /get_users originate from Supergood's reverse-engineered browser automation and are not part of the official Navan REST API. Use /v1/bookings for booking data.

Fix: Verify the endpoint path against the table above. The Navan API uses /v1/ prefixed paths at https://api.navan.com.

Error 429 — Rate Limited

Root causes:

1. Exceeding the per-minute request limit
2. Automated scripts making rapid sequential calls without throttling
3. Multiple services sharing the same credentials

Diagnostic steps:

# Check rate limit headers in response
curl -s -D - "https://api.navan.com/v1/bookings?page=0&size=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -o /dev/null 2>&1 | grep -i "rate\|retry\|limit"

Fix: Implement exponential backoff. Start with a 2-second delay, doubling on each retry up to 3 attempts. Cache tokens to avoid redundant auth requests. If using multiple services, consider separate credentials per service.

async function withBackoff<T>(fn: () => Promise<T>, maxRetries = 3): Promise<T> {
  for (let i = 0; i < maxRetries; i++) {
    try { return await fn(); }
    catch (err: any) {
      if (err.status !== 429 || i === maxRetries - 1) throw err;
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, Math.pow(2, i + 1) * 1000));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('Max retries exceeded');
}

Error 500 — Internal Server Error

Root causes:

1. Navan backend service failure
2. Malformed request body causing server-side exception
3. Data inconsistency in your organization's records

Diagnostic steps:

# Test with minimal request to isolate
curl -s -w "\nHTTP %{http_code}" "https://api.navan.com/v1/bookings?page=0&size=1" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Fix: Retry after 30 seconds. If the error persists across multiple endpoints, it is likely a Navan-side outage. If only one endpoint fails, check your request body for malformed JSON. For persistent 500 errors, contact Navan support with the endpoint, timestamp, and request ID from the response headers.

Error 503 — Service Unavailable (Maintenance)

Root causes:

1. Scheduled Navan maintenance window
2. Navan infrastructure scaling event
3. Regional AWS outage (Navan is AWS-hosted)

Fix: Wait and retry with exponential backoff. Check the Navan Help Center for maintenance announcements. 503 errors are typically transient and resolve within minutes. Implement circuit-breaker patterns for production systems to avoid cascading failures during extended outages.

Output

This error reference delivers:

• Six HTTP error codes with Navan-specific root causes
• Copy-paste diagnostic curl commands for each error type
• Fix procedures ranked by likelihood
• A backoff implementation for automated retry handling

Error Handling

Error	Code	Most Likely Cause	First Action
Unauthorized	401	Expired OAuth token	Re-run token exchange
Forbidden	403	Tier or scope limitation	Check plan tier; contact Navan support
Not found	404	Wrong endpoint path	Verify against known endpoints table
Rate limited	429	No throttling in client code	Add exponential backoff
Server error	500	Navan backend issue	Retry after 30s; check request body
Maintenance	503	Navan downtime	Wait and retry; check help center

Examples

Full diagnostic script:

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== Navan API Diagnostic ==="
echo "1. Testing authentication..."
AUTH_RESULT=$(curl -s -w "\n%{http_code}" -X POST https://api.navan.com/ta-auth/oauth/token \
  -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" \
  -d "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=$NAVAN_CLIENT_ID&client_secret=$NAVAN_CLIENT_SECRET")
AUTH_CODE=$(echo "$AUTH_RESULT" | tail -1)
echo "   Auth: HTTP $AUTH_CODE"

if [ "$AUTH_CODE" = "200" ]; then
  TOKEN=$(echo "$AUTH_RESULT" | head -1 | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['access_token'])")
  echo "2. Testing bookings (page 0)..."
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w "   Bookings: HTTP %{http_code}\n" \
    "https://api.navan.com/v1/bookings?page=0&size=1" -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"
else
  echo "   Auth failed — check NAVAN_CLIENT_ID and NAVAN_CLIENT_SECRET"
fi

Resources

• Navan Help Center — announcements and maintenance notices
• Navan TMC API Docs — API reference
• Navan Security & Compliance — SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS Level 1
• Navan Integrations — partner ecosystem and integration options

Next Steps

After resolving your error, see navan-sdk-patterns for production-grade error handling with automatic retries, or navan-local-dev-loop for request logging that captures errors for post-mortem analysis.