What is the difference between continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
The Key Distinction
Both practices start the same way: code is committed, built, and run through automated tests. The difference is what happens after those tests pass. In continuous delivery, the artifact is staged and ready to deploy, but a person clicks a button to release it. In continuous deployment, that button click is also automated.
This means continuous deployment is a stricter version of continuous delivery. You can have continuous delivery without continuous deployment, but you cannot have continuous deployment without continuous delivery. The pipeline stages are nearly identical; only the final promotion step differs.
When to Use Each
Continuous delivery fits teams that need regulatory approval, scheduled release windows, or a manual quality check before customers see changes. It still gives you fast feedback and a deployable artifact at any time.
Continuous deployment suits teams with strong automated testing, good monitoring, and the ability to roll back quickly. It removes the human bottleneck and shortens lead time from commit to production, but it demands more maturity in testing and observability.
- Continuous delivery: manual approval before production
- Continuous deployment: no manual approval before production
- Both require automated build and test
- Continuous deployment requires more mature monitoring and rollback
Common mistakes
- Thinking continuous delivery means no automation—it still automates everything up to the production gate.
- Assuming continuous deployment is always better; it can be risky without strong tests and monitoring.
- Confusing continuous delivery with continuous integration, which only covers merging and building code.
