---
title: Cancelling jobs
description: Cancel a job you no longer need and release its reservation.
---

Cancel a job when you stop waiting for it, when your user leaves, or when your own code fails between steps:

```bash
curl -X POST https://convt-api-production.up.railway.app/v1/jobs/$JOB/cancel \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CONVT_API_KEY"
```

The response is the job after the call. Check its `status`:

| `status` after cancel | What happened                                                                          |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `cancelled`           | The job stopped and its 1-cent reservation was released. No charge.                    |
| `succeeded`           | The job finished before your cancel arrived. It was billed, and its outputs are ready. |
| `failed`              | The job had already failed. No charge.                                                 |

Cancel is safe to repeat. A finished job is returned unchanged.

A running conversion stops within about 5 seconds, when its worker next checks in.

## Cancel on error

If your code fails after it created a job, cancel the job in a `finally` or `catch`. Otherwise the reservation stays open until the job expires, and it counts against your spend cap until then.

```js
const { job, upload_url } = await call("/v1/jobs", { method: "POST" /* ... */ });
try {
  // upload, start, poll, download
} catch (error) {
  await call(`/v1/jobs/${job.id}/cancel`, { method: "POST" }).catch(() => {});
  throw error;
}
```

Cancelling does not free storage. The upload counts toward your storage limit until the job's 24-hour expiry.