# Canary Release

Source: https://customlabs.io/glossary/canary-release/
Updated: 2026-09-13

Cost & ops

# Canary Release

Also known as canary deployment, canary rollout

A canary release exposes a change to a small, deliberately chosen slice of traffic first.

A bad model version, prompt, or index build then shows up against a bounded audience, not everyone.

The cohort is chosen for how much damage a bad version could do, not for convenience.

The ramp to full traffic follows a written schedule with abort criteria set before anyone sees the change.

Watching only for hard errors misses the failure that matters most: a quality regression with no exception.

[The AI Release Path](https://customlabs.io/release/)

[← Back to the full glossary](https://customlabs.io/glossary/)

## Related terms

[Output Drift Output drift is a gradual change in a live system's output, with no release behind it.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/output-drift/)[Model Deprecation Model deprecation is a provider retiring a model version on its own schedule.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/model-deprecation/)[Shadow Deployment A shadow deployment runs a candidate release against real production traffic, offline, before release.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/shadow-deployment/)

## More in Cost & ops

[Inference Cost Inference cost is what it costs to run a trained model on a request.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/inference-cost/)[Notebook-to-Production Notebook-to-production is the gap between a working prototype and a system that runs reliably.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/notebook-to-production/)[Acceptance Rate Acceptance rate is the share of an agent's proposed changes a human reviewer approves.](https://customlabs.io/glossary/acceptance-rate/)