I’ve previously successfully completed a few batch jobs of ~50k embeddings and I am trying to download the resulting files (10 batches with ~2GB files as results), but all of the files fail to download through the /files/{file_id}/content endpoint (https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/files/retrieve-contents).
Smaller files work (like any “error” file of the batches), but the ~2GB batch output themselves always fail. All I get when trying to fetch those is 20 seconds of nothing, then a Cloudflare error page (502 Bad gateway).
I’ve confirmed it’s not an issue with my connection. It has the same behaviour on multiple machines colocated all over Europe and US. OpenAI Support claims there are no current outages, and send me for an endless loop trying to provide support for ChatGPT…
Steps to repro (using openai-node, but I get the same result using curl exactly like the example in the docs):
// batch_686cfa016d188190b4c59f087634a269_output.jsonl (1841.05 MB)
const content = await openai.files.content('file-K6cKA4LNQy6LLoQKamSFhW');
More file-id’s that fail: file-2k1YfYkzYDKpEFip8pBbjA (2GB), file-2uudc3nffig6QChLSVY5nD (2GB), file-AXQ471Yymu5J1cwMUighTJ (~1GB)
A smaller file from a different batch that works fine: file-Dy444dJcxaw3XzmXbc8tXR (45MB)
Result:
node_modules/openai/src/error.ts:98
return new InternalServerError(status, error, message, headers);
^
InternalServerError: 502 <!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>api.openai.com | 502: Bad gateway</title>
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<span class="inline-block">Bad gateway</span>
<span class="code-label">Error code 502</span>
</h1>
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Visit <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/5xx-error-landing?utm_source=errorcode_502&utm_campaign=api.openai.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cloudflare.com</a> for more information.
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<div class="mt-3">2025-07-09 16:11:00 UTC</div>
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<span class="cf-icon-server block md:hidden h-20 bg-center bg-no-repeat"></span>
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<span class="md:block w-full truncate">api.openai.com</span>
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Host
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<h2 class="text-3xl font-normal leading-1.3 mb-4">What happened?</h2>
<p>The web server reported a bad gateway error.</p>
</div>
<div class="w-1/2 md:w-full float-left leading-relaxed">
<h2 class="text-3xl font-normal leading-1.3 mb-4">What can I do?</h2>
<p class="mb-6">Please try again in a few minutes.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="cf-error-footer cf-wrapper w-240 lg:w-full py-10 sm:py-4 sm:px-8 mx-auto text-center sm:text-left border-solid border-0 border-t border-gray-300">
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<span class="cf-footer-item sm:block sm:mb-1">Cloudflare Ray ID: <strong class="font-semibold">95c917514af9a68a</strong></span>
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at Function.generate (node_modules/openai/src/error.ts:98:14)
at OpenAI.makeStatusError (node_modules/openai/src/core.ts:435:21)
at OpenAI.makeRequest (node_modules/openai/src/core.ts:499:24)
at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:105:5)
at async fetchAndInsertBatches (api/vector/knowledge/advertisers/advertisersIndex.mts:148:19)
at async <anonymous> (api/vector/knowledge/advertisers/advertisersIndex.mts:225:2) {
status: 502,
headers: {
'alt-svc': 'h3=":443"; ma=86400',
'cache-control': 'private, max-age=0, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0',
'cf-ray': '95c917514af9a68a-ARN',
connection: 'keep-alive',
'content-length': '6327',
'content-type': 'text/html; charset=UTF-8',
date: 'Wed, 09 Jul 2025 16:11:00 GMT',
expires: 'Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT',
'referrer-policy': 'same-origin',
server: 'cloudflare',
'strict-transport-security': 'max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload',
'x-content-type-options': 'nosniff',
'x-frame-options': 'SAMEORIGIN'
},
request_id: undefined,
error: undefined,
code: undefined,
param: undefined,
type: undefined
}
Node.js v23.11.0