What is difeerence between 404 & 401 error?

404 is, the page is not live which you are trying to search,
and 401 is, server unauthorized error. The server generating a 401 response MUST send a WWW-Authenticate header field1 containing at least one challenge applicable to the target resource.
 
A 404 error is an HTTP status code that means that the page you were trying to reach on a website couldn't be found on their server. The 404 Not Found error might appear for several reasons even though no real issue exists, so sometimes a simple refresh will often load the page you were looking for. The most common method is to retry the web page by pressing F5, clicking the refresh/reload button, or trying the URL from the address bar again.

The 401 Unauthorized error is an HTTP status code that means the page you were trying to access cannot be loaded until you first log in with a valid user ID and password.
 
404:
404 or not found error message is generated by the website hosting server when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link. In other words this error code indicates that the client (user) was able to communicate with the server but the server could not find what was requested.

401 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials. This behavior occurs if the following conditions are true: The Web site that you try to view uses Integrated Windows authentication. The application pool for the Web site recycles during the authentication process.
 
404 Error: Not Found
The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

401 Error: Unauthorized
The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field (section 14.46) containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Authorization header field (section 14.8). If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then the user SHOULD be presented the entity that was given in the response, since that entity MAY include relevant diagnostic information. HTTP access authentication is explained in section 11.
 
404 errors indicate that the page is “not found”, which means that the deleted content can stay indexed longer on Google and other SERPs.

401 errors indicate an unauthorized access due to invalid credentials. This error is an HTTP status and it cannot be loaded until you log in with a correct user ID and password.
 
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