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