---
title: "Canary release"
description: "A partial, time-limited deployment of a change to a small share of production traffic, evaluated against a control group before the rollout continues."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/canary-release
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-25
---

# Canary release

A partial, time-limited deployment of a change to a small share of production traffic, evaluated against a control group before the rollout continues [1]. For AI systems the evaluation compares live quality, safety and fairness metrics with pre-registered rollback criteria.

- Developed in: [ch. 15, Progressive delivery as a control](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-deployment#progressive-delivery-as-a-control); [ch. 05, Pattern: Staged Rollout with Rollback Criteria](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/patterns/staged-rollout-rollback-criteria)
- Chapters: [ch. 05, Patterns](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/patterns) · [ch. 14, Development](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-development) · [ch. 15, Deployment](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-deployment) · [ch. 23, AI Agents](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/governing-agents)
- Contrast with: [Shadow deployment](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/shadow-deployment) · [Blue-green deployment](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/blue-green-deployment)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-canary-release

## Sources

[1] The Site Reliability Workbook, ch. 16 "Canarying Releases" ("a partial and time-limited deployment of a change in a service and its evaluation"). Google (O'Reilly). 2018. https://sre.google/workbook/canarying-releases/ (verified: primary)