is there an easy way to get the http status code in the failure block from AFHTTPClient?

Ok, found the answer with the operation object

failure:^(AFHTTPRequestOperation *operation, NSError *error){ 
       NSLog(@"error code %d",[operation.response statusCode]);
}];

In newer versions of AFNetworking, you can retrieve the response object from the error:

[[[error userInfo] objectForKey:AFNetworkingOperationFailingURLResponseErrorKey] statusCode]

This is handy if you're doing error handling further up the line and don't want to pass around the response object.

For AFNetworking 3.0, use

failure:^(NSURLSessionTask *operation, NSError *error) {
    NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse *)operation.response;
    httpResponse.statusCode;
    NSLog(@"status code: %li", (long)httpResponse.statusCode);
}

NSInteger operationStatusCode = [operation.error code];

NSInteger httpStatusCode = operation.response.statusCode;

If the requests were cancelled/unreachable/timeout, httpStatusCode will be always 0.

Alternatively you can identify the issue by understanding the operationStatusCode. It is a NSError Object.

• If it cannot reach/timeout/no network to process request, the operationStatusCode will be -1009.
• If you cancel the operations queue the operationStatusCode will be -999.

You can check all other NSError codes and their descriptions in Apple's documentation