What HTTP status code to use for 'account required' pages?

Question

I run a site where some pages require a free account to access. I'm noticing a large number of soft 404s in Webmaster Tools coming from these pages. What is the correct status code to pass for these pages?

Answer 1

I would recommend that a '403: Forbidden' status code would be the most acceptible in this situation. Wikipedia says

"A typical request that may receive a 403 Forbidden response is a GET for a web page, performed by a web browser to retrieve the page for display to a user in a browser window. The web server may return a 403 Forbidden status for other types of requests as well."