What is the difference between Blue-Green and Canary Deployments?

Blue-Green and Canary are two popular deployment strategies used to release software with minimal risk. In a Blue-Green deployment, two identical environments exist, one live (Blue) and one new (Green), and traffic is switched all at once to the new version, enabling zero downtime and instant rollback. Canary deployment, on the other hand, releases the new version to a small group of users first and gradually increases traffic, allowing teams to catch issues early and reduce impact. While Blue-Green is simpler and faster, Canary is safer and better suited for frequent or high-risk releases.