---
layout: api
page_title: Consistency Modes
description: >-
  Every Consul HTTP API read request uses one of several "consistency modes" that offer
  different levels of response consistency and performance. By default, Consul uses a
  consistency mode that is suitable for most use cases. Users can override consistency modes
  to fine-tune these trade-offs for their own use case.
---

# Consistency Modes

Every Consul HTTP API read request uses one of several _consistency modes_ that offer
different levels of response consistency and performance. By default, Consul uses a
consistency mode that is suitable for most use cases. Users can override consistency modes
to fine-tune these trade-offs for their own use case at two levels:
- Per interface (HTTP API, DNS)
- Per request (HTTP API requests only)

## What is Consistency?

Consul servers are responsible for maintaining state information like the registration and
health status of services and nodes. To protect this state against the potential failure of
Consul servers, this state is replicated across three or more Consul servers in production using a
[consensus protocol](/consul/docs/concept/consensus).

One Consul server is elected leader and acts as the ultimate authority on Consul's state.
If a majority of Consul servers agree to a state change, the leader is responsible for recording
the change and then distributing it to the non-leader Consul servers—known as followers.
Because it takes time for a state change on the leader to propagate to the followers,
followers may have a slightly outdated, or "stale", view of Consul's state.

If a read request is handled by the current leader, the response is guaranteed to be
fully _consistent_ (as up-to-date as possible).
If the same request were handled by a follower, the response may be less consistent:
based on a _stale_ (outdated) copy of the leader's state.
Consistency is highest if the response comes from the leader.
But ensuring only the leader can respond to the request prevents spreading
read request load across all Consul servers.

The consistency mode controls which Consul servers can respond to read requests,
enabling control over this inherent trade-off between consistency and performance.

## Available Consistency Modes

Each HTTP API endpoint documents its support for the three read consistency modes:

- `stale` -
  [Consul DNS queries use `stale` mode by default](#consul-dns-queries).
  This mode allows any server to handle the read regardless of whether it is the leader.
  The trade-off is very fast and scalable reads with a higher likelihood of stale values.
  Results are generally consistent to within 50 milliseconds of the leader,
  though there is no upper limit on this staleness.
  Since this mode allows reads without a leader,
  a cluster that is unavailable (no quorum) can still respond to queries.

- `default` -
  [Consul HTTP API queries use `default` mode by default](#consul-http-api-queries).
  It is strongly consistent in almost all cases.
  However, there is a small window in which a new leader may be elected
  during which the old leader may respond with stale values.
  The trade-off is fast reads but potentially stale values.
  The condition resulting in stale reads is hard to trigger,
  and most clients should not need to worry about this case.
  Also, note that this race condition only applies to reads, not writes.

- `consistent` -
  This mode is strongly consistent without caveats.
  It requires that a leader verify with a quorum of peers that it is still leader.
  This introduces an additional round-trip to all server nodes.
  The trade-off is increased latency due to an extra round trip.
  Most clients should not use this unless they cannot tolerate a stale read.

~> **Scaling read requests**: The most effective way to increase read scalability
is to convert non-`stale` reads to `stale` reads. If most requests are already
`stale` reads and additional load reduction is desired, use Consul Enterprise
[redundancy zones](/consul/docs/manage/scale/redundancy-zone) or
[read replicas](/consul/docs/manage/scale/read-replica)
to spread `stale` reads across additional, _non-voting_ Consul servers.
Non-voting servers enhance read scalability without increasing the number
of voting servers; adding more then 5 voting servers is not recommended because
it decreases Consul's performance.

### Intra-Datacenter Request Behavior

The following diagrams show how the intra-datacenter request path varies
per consistency mode and the relative trade-offs between level of consistency and performance.

<Tabs>
<Tab heading="Stale reads">

[![stale consistency mode read request path](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-stale.png)](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-stale.png)

</Tab>

<Tab heading="Default reads">

[![default consistency mode read request path](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-default.png)](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-default.png)

</Tab>
<Tab heading="Consistent reads, all writes">

[![consistent consistency mode read, any write request path](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-consistent.png)](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-consistent.png)

</Tab>
</Tabs>

### Cross-Datacenter Request Behavior

When making a request across federated Consul datacenters, requests are forwarded from
a local server to any remote server. Once in the remote datacenter, the request path
is the same as a [local request with the same consistency mode](#intra-datacenter-request-behavior).
The following diagrams show the cross-datacenter request paths when Consul servers in datacenters are
[federated either directly or via mesh gateways](/consul/docs/east-west/mesh-gateway/enable).

<Tabs>
<Tab heading="Traditional WAN federation">

[![consistency mode behavior across Consul datacenters with traditional WAN federation](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-cross-datacenter-federation-traditional.png)](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-cross-datacenter-federation-traditional.png)

</Tab>

<Tab heading="WAN federation via mesh gateways">

[![consistency mode behavior across Consul datacenters with WAN federation via mesh gateways](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-cross-datacenter-federation-mesh-gateways.png)](/img/consistency-modes/consistency-mode-cross-datacenter-federation-mesh-gateways.png)

</Tab>
</Tabs>

## Usage

### Consul DNS Queries

When DNS queries are issued to [Consul's DNS interface](/consul/docs/discover/dns),
Consul uses the `stale` consistency mode by default when interfacing with its
underlying Consul service discovery HTTP APIs
([Catalog](/consul/api-docs/catalog), [Health](/consul/api-docs/health), and [Prepared Query](/consul/api-docs/query)).

The consistency mode underlying Consul DNS queries cannot be overridden on a
per-request basis.

#### Changing the Default Consistency Mode

If stronger consistency is required at the expense of increased latency,
set [`dns_config.allow_stale`] to `false` to make Consul use the
`default` consistency mode instead of `stale`
when interfacing with the underlying Consul service discovery HTTP APIs.

#### Limiting Staleness (Advanced Usage)

~> **Caution**:
  Configuring [`dns_config.max_stale`] may result in a prolonged outage
  if your Consul servers become overloaded.
  We do not recommend using this setting to limit staleness
  unless it would be preferable for your services to be unavailable
  than to receive results that are too stale.
  If bounded result consistency is required by a service, consider
  modifying the service to use `consistent` service discovery HTTP API queries
  instead of DNS lookups.

If Consul is configured to respond to DNS queries in `stale` consistency mode
([`dns_config.allow_stale`] is `true`),
you can set an upper limit on how stale a response is allowed to be by
configuring [`dns_config.max_stale`].
When the Consul agent handling the response is behind the leader by more than [`dns_config.max_stale`] time,
the request will be forwarded to the leader for handling as in `default` consistency mode.

A common cause for response staleness exceeding [`dns_config.max_stale`] is that
Consul servers are overloaded by requests. Under these circumstances, [`dns_config.max_stale`]
will make the overloading worse by converting cheap `stale` reads to more expensive `default` reads.

### Consul HTTP API Queries

All HTTP API read requests use the `default` consistency mode by default
unless [overridden on a per-request basis](#overriding-a-request-s-consistency-mode).
We do [not recommend changing the consistency mode used by default](#changing-the-default-consistency-mode-advanced-usage).

Write requests do not support defining a consistency mode.
All writes follow the behavior of the `consistent` consistency mode.

#### Overriding a Request's Consistency Mode

The HTTP API documentation for each endpoint lists which consistency modes can be used
to override the default on a per-request basis. To use a supported consistency mode
other than the default, include the desired consistency mode as a URL query parameter
when calling the endpoint:
- `stale`: Use the `stale` query parameter
- `consistent`: Use the `consistent` query parameter
- `default`: Use the `leader` query parameter;
   only relevant [if the default consistency mode is changed to `stale`](#changing-the-default-consistency-mode-advanced-usage)

#### Changing the Default Consistency Mode (Advanced Usage)

~> **Caution**:
  Configuring [`discovery_max_stale`] may result in a prolonged outage
  if your Consul servers become overloaded.
  We do not recommend using this setting to limit staleness
  unless it would be preferable for your services to be unavailable
  than to receive results that are too stale.
  If bounded result consistency is required by a service, consider
  modifying the service to use `consistent` mode
  [on a per-request basis](#overriding-a-request-s-consistency-mode).

The default consistency mode can be changed to `stale` for service discovery HTTP API endpoints,
including:
- [Catalog API](/consul/api-docs/catalog)
- [Health API](/consul/api-docs/health)
- [Prepared Query API](/consul/api-docs/query)

This allows Consul operators to spread service discovery read load across Consul servers
with a centralized configuration change, avoiding the need to modify every service to
explicitly set `stale` consistency mode in their requests.
Services can still override this default on a per-request basis by
[specifying a supported consistency mode as a query parameter in the request](#overriding-a-request-s-consistency-mode).

To configure Consul servers that receive service discovery requests to use `stale`
consistency mode unless overridden,
set [`discovery_max_stale`] to a value greater than zero in their agent configuration.
The `stale` consistency mode will be used by default unless the data is sufficiently stale:
its Raft log's index is more than [`discovery_max_stale`] indices behind the leader's.
Setting a positive value for [`discovery_max_stale`]
is analogous to [limiting the staleness of Consul DNS queries](#limiting-staleness-advanced-usage)
by setting [`dns_config.max_stale`].

A common cause for response staleness exceeding [`discovery_max_stale`] is that
Consul servers are overloaded by requests. Under these circumstances, [`discovery_max_stale`]
will make the overloading worse by converting cheap `stale` reads to more expensive `default` reads.

### Visibility into Response Staleness

To support bounding the acceptable staleness of data, responses provide the
`X-Consul-LastContact` header containing the time in milliseconds that a server
was last contacted by the leader node. The `X-Consul-KnownLeader` header also
indicates if there is a known leader. These can be used by clients to gauge the
staleness of a result and take appropriate action.

### Visibility into Consistency Mode Used

The Consul DNS and HTTP API interfaces allow setting the consistency mode
at different levels (interface and per-request).
Advanced settings for the [DNS](#limiting-staleness-advanced-usage) and
[HTTP API](#changing-the-default-consistency-mode-advanced-usage) interfaces can even
cause the consistency mode to change from `stale` to `default` if results are sufficiently stale.

To understand the consistency mode used for a particular HTTP API request,
check the `X-Consul-Effective-Consistency` response header.
The value of the header matches the
[name of the query parameter associated with the consistency mode](#overriding-a-request-s-consistency-mode).
In the following example, the header shows that the `default` consistency mode was used.

```shell-session
$ curl --include $CONSUL_HTTP_ADDR/v1/catalog/services

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
...
X-Consul-Effective-Consistency: leader
X-Consul-KnownLeader: true
X-Consul-LastContact: 0

{
  "redis": [],
  "postgresql": ["primary", "secondary"]
}
```

The DNS interface does not support viewing the consistency mode used for a particular query.

### Relationship to Request Caching

Note that some HTTP API endpoints support a `cached` parameter which has some of the same
semantics as `stale` consistency mode but different trade offs. This behavior is described in
[agent caching feature documentation](/consul/api-docs/features/caching)


[`dns_config.allow_stale`]: /consul/docs/reference/agent/configuration-file/dns#allow_stale
[`dns_config.max_stale`]: /consul/docs/reference/agent/configuration-file/dns#max_stale
[`discovery_max_stale`]: /consul/docs/reference/agent/configuration-file/general#discovery_max_stale
