---
title: "Stability | Grafana Agent documentation"
description: "Grafana Agent features fall into one of three stability categories, experimental, beta, or stable"
---

# Stability

Stability of functionality usually refers to the stability of a *use case,* such as collecting and forwarding OpenTelemetry metrics.

Features within the Grafana Agent project will fall into one of three stability categories:

- **Experimental**: A new use case is being explored.
- **Beta**: Functionality covering a use case is being matured.
- **Stable**: Functionality covering a use case is believed to be stable.

The default stability is stable; features will be explicitly marked as experimental or beta if they are not stable.

## Experimental

The **experimental** stability category is used to denote that maintainers are exploring a new use case, and would like feedback.

- Experimental features are subject to frequent breaking changes.
- Experimental features can be removed with no equivalent replacement.
- Experimental features may require enabling feature flags to use.

Unless removed, experimental features eventually graduate to beta.

## Beta

The **beta** stability category is used to denote a feature which is being matured.

- Beta features are subject to occasional breaking changes.
- Beta features can be replaced by equivalent functionality that covers the same use case.
- Beta features can be used without enabling feature flags.

Unless replaced with equivalent functionality, beta features eventually graduate to stable.

## Stable

The **stable** stability category is used to denote a feature as stable.

- Breaking changes to stable features are rare, and will be well-documented.
- If new functionality is introduced to replace existing stable functionality, deprecation and removal timeline will be well-documented.
- Stable features can be used without enabling feature flags.