Feature Management

What is Feature Toggle?

Q: What is Feature Toggle?

Another name for a feature flag — a mechanism to turn features on or off without code changes.

Feature toggle is a synonym for feature flag. The terms are used interchangeably in the industry, though "feature flag" has become more common in recent years.

Some teams make a distinction based on the toggle's lifecycle: short-lived toggles for releases (flags), longer-lived toggles for configuration (toggles), and permanent toggles for operations (ops toggles). In practice, the underlying mechanism is the same.

Martin Fowler's classification identifies four categories: release toggles (manage incomplete features), experiment toggles (A/B tests), ops toggles (control operational behavior), and permission toggles (gate features by user segment).

Example

Your team uses the term 'feature toggle' for long-lived configuration switches (like enabling debug mode for specific customers) and 'feature flag' for short-lived release flags that are removed after full rollout.

Related Terms

Feature Flag

A toggle that enables or disables a feature in your application without deploying new code.

Gradual Rollout

A release strategy where a feature is incrementally released to larger percentages of users over time.

Kill Switch

A feature flag used to instantly disable a feature in production without deploying new code.

Ship features with confidence

Use feature flags to control rollouts, run A/B tests, and instantly kill problematic features.

Explore Feature Flags