OverflowError in Python — What It Means and How to Fix It

What Python's OverflowError exception means and how to resolve it.

Published October 28, 2026

OverflowError is raised when the result of an arithmetic operation is too large to be represented.

Key points

  • Catch it specifically with "except OverflowError:" when you want to handle this exact case rather than a bare except

Example

Rare in standard Python since integers have arbitrary precision, but can occur with float operations
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