release statuses

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Release statuses overview

Expo uses different release statuses to indicate the stability and readiness of tools and services: Experimental, Alpha, Preview, Beta, Stable, and Deprecated. Not all statuses apply to every product area; each product area uses the statuses that fit how it ships.

Release status usage by product area

Expo SDK libraries and Expo Router use Alpha and Beta statuses. EAS services use Preview and Beta statuses. Expo CLI and other development tools use Experimental status. Any feature can become Deprecated at the end of its life, and individual APIs inside otherwise stable libraries can be Experimental.

Experimental status definition

Experimental features are early explorations of new ideas shared to validate a direction while the team is still deciding whether the feature should exist at all. Experimental features may change significantly or be removed entirely in any release, APIs are subject to change without notice or deprecation warnings, implementations should be treated as proof of concept rather than final, may have known bugs or missing functionality, and are not recommended for production apps. This status is different from the experiments field in app config.

Alpha status definition

Alpha features are available for early testing but may have significant limitations and are in the earliest stage of development. APIs are subject to breaking changes without a new SDK release, implementation may change substantially based on feedback, and alpha features are not recommended for production apps.

Preview status definition

Preview features provide an early look at a focused slice of new functionality designed with minimal overhead and limited scope, but are not yet feature-complete. You'll mostly see this status on new EAS services. Preview features represent a focused slice of functionality, not the full feature set, APIs are subject to breaking changes as the feature is built out, and can be used in production with thorough testing.

Beta status definition

Beta features are feature-complete and undergoing final validation before a stable release. You'll mostly see this status on EAS services and SDK libraries close to stable. Beta features have complete core functionality, breaking changes are possible but unlikely unless critical issues are found, and can be used in production with thorough testing.

Stable status definition

Features without a status badge are stable and fully released for production use. Stable features are production-ready with full support, and per semantic versioning, breaking changes to stable features only occur in new major versions.

Deprecated status definition

Deprecated features are no longer recommended for use and will be removed in a future release. Deprecated features show deprecation warnings in documentation and code, Expo may not accept feedback or issues for deprecated APIs, and removal of deprecated features and APIs happens in a new SDK release.

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