"An Error Occurred in the Upload. Please Try Again Later" — 6 Real Causes
This is WordPress's vaguest upload message, and that's by design — not a bug. It comes from the classic media uploader's generic catch-all handler, which knows a request failed but was never told why.
Test with a small file first. If a file under 200 KB uploads fine and your original doesn't, you're looking at a size or resource limit. If even the small file fails, work through plugins, security software, and folder permissions instead — in that order.
Most WordPress error messages at least gesture at a cause — a file type, a byte count, a folder path. This one doesn't. "An error occurred in the upload. Please try again later." is what the uploader shows when it has literally nothing more specific to say, and that's worth understanding before you start troubleshooting, because it changes where you look first.
Why this message says nothing
WordPress's classic media uploader — the one behind the Add Media modal, and the one several page builders still use for their own upload fields — is built on an older JavaScript library called Plupload. When the upload request it sends comes back as anything other than success, Plupload's error handler doesn't distinguish between why: a rejected file, a server timeout, a blocked request, and a dropped connection all land in the same generic catch. WordPress prints the same sentence for all of them.
That's different from most of the other error messages on this site. "Unable to create directory," "exceeds the maximum upload size," and "this file type is not permitted" all tell you something real about the failure. This one tells you only that a failure happened — which is why troubleshooting it means checking causes in order rather than reading a clue.
The six causes, in checking order
1. A size or resource limit
Thirty seconds, and it splits the whole problem in half:
Upload a JPEG under 200 KB. If it succeeds and your original file doesn't, you're dealing with a limit — upload_max_filesize, post_max_size, or a PHP memory ceiling reached while WordPress generates thumbnails. See cause 5 below, and the deeper breakdown in exceeds the maximum upload size.
If the small file also fails, it isn't about size, and the remaining causes matter more than this one.
2. A plugin conflict
The most common real-world cause, and the fastest to isolate once you suspect it:
- Deactivate every plugin except WordPress core.
- Retry the upload.
- If it now succeeds, reactivate plugins one at a time, retrying after each, until the failure returns. That's your culprit.
Security, caching, image-optimisation and page-builder plugins account for most of these, because all four intercept the upload request on its way through — a security plugin to inspect it, a caching plugin to rewrite headers, an optimisation plugin to hook into the file once it lands.
3. A security plugin, firewall, or CDN block
Close cousin of cause 2, but worth checking separately because the fix is different: a security tool doesn't have to be a WordPress plugin. Wordfence, Sucuri, a hosting-level firewall, or a CDN like Cloudflare in front of the site can all inspect or rate-limit an upload POST request and reject it — silently, as far as WordPress is concerned.
Check the security tool's own request log, not WordPress's. WordPress has nothing to report, because from its side the request never properly arrived.
4. Folder permissions
Less common as the cause of this specific message than of "unable to create directory," but it happens on some server configurations, where a permissions or ownership fault gets reported through the generic uploader message instead of a specific one. If wp-content/uploads isn't writable by the user PHP runs as, nothing lands regardless of what triggered the write. Full diagnosis in unable to create directory wp-content/uploads.
5. PHP memory exhausted during processing
Same underlying fault as our "HTTP error." guide — WordPress decodes the image and renders every registered thumbnail size, and a large photo can want more memory than PHP allows — but reached through the classic uploader instead of the block editor, so it surfaces as this message instead of that one.
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M'); in wp-config.php is the fix, capped by whatever your host actually permits at the server level.
6. A connection that drops mid-upload
On an unstable network, the upload request itself can fail to complete — nothing about the file or the server is wrong. Try a wired connection, or a different network, to rule it out.
What WordPress 7.1 changes (and what it doesn't)
WordPress 7.1, released August 19, 2026, added automatic retries when an upload's connection drops partway through — directly addressing cause 6 above for sites running it. It's a real improvement, and worth knowing about if you're chasing an intermittent version of this error on a flaky connection.
It doesn't touch the other five. File size limits, plugin conflicts, security blocks, folder permissions and PHP memory are all handled exactly as before. If your case isn't a dropped connection, upgrading to 7.1 won't be the fix.
Is this the same as "HTTP error."?
No — different message, different code path, and it's worth telling them apart before you start troubleshooting. "HTTP error." comes from the newer upload handler used by the block editor, and appears when the server's response can't be parsed as JSON. "An error occurred in the upload" comes from the older Plupload-based uploader behind the classic Add Media modal and several page builders' own upload fields, and it's an even blunter catch-all — it doesn't distinguish a transport failure from an outright rejection the way "HTTP error." at least implies one.
The overlap: PHP memory and file-size limits can trigger either one, depending on which uploader handled the request. The causes above that are specific to this message — plugin conflicts, security blocks — are less likely to be what's behind "HTTP error." instead.
FAQ
What does this message actually mean?
It's the classic uploader's generic catch-all — it knows the request failed but was never given a specific reason. The real cause is one of six things: file size, a plugin conflict, a security or CDN block, folder permissions, PHP memory, or a dropped connection.
Is this the same as "HTTP error."?
No. Different uploader, different code path. "HTTP error." comes from the block editor's handler failing to parse a response; this one comes from the older Plupload-based uploader and is even less specific.
Why does a small file work but a large one doesn't?
That's a resource limit, not a broken uploader — check upload_max_filesize, post_max_size, and the PHP memory limit.
Can a security plugin or firewall cause this?
Yes, commonly. Check the security tool's own request log — WordPress has nothing to show, since the request never properly completed as far as it's concerned.
Does WordPress 7.1 fix this?
Only the dropped-connection cause, which now retries automatically. The other five causes are unchanged.
How do I find the plugin causing it?
Deactivate all plugins, confirm the upload works, then reactivate them one at a time until the failure returns.
Skip the classic uploader entirely
Fig2WP sends images from your Figma selection straight to the Media Library over its own upload path — resized, converted and quality-checked in the browser before anything reaches WordPress, so an oversized export never gets the chance to trip a limit in the first place.