About Magento modes

You can run Magento in any of the following modes:

Mode name	Description
default	Enables you to deploy the Magento application on a single server without changing any settings. However, default mode is not optimized for production. To deploy the Magento application on more than one server or to optimize it for production, change to one of the other modes. Static view file caching is enabled Exceptions are not displayed to the user; instead, exceptions are written to log files. Hides custom `X-Magento-*` HTTP request and response headers
developer	Intended for development only, this mode: Disables static view file caching Provides verbose logging Enables automatic code compilation Enables enhanced debugging Shows custom `X-Magento-*` HTTP request and response headers Results in the slowest performance Shows errors on the frontend
production	Intended for deployment on a production system, this mode: Does not show exceptions to the user (exceptions are written to logs only). Serves static view files from cache only. Prevents automatic code file compilation. New or updated files are not written to the file system. Does not allow you to enable or disable cache types in Magento Admin. More information about enabling and disabling the cache.
maintenance	Intended to prevent access to a Magento Commerce site while it is being updated or reconfigured, this mode: Redirects site visitors to a default `Service Temporarily Unavailable` page. When the site is in maintenance mode, the `var/` directory contains the `.maintenance.flag` file. You can configure maintenance mode to allow visitor access from a specified list of IP addresses.

Magento Commerce Cloud supports only the production and maintenance modes.

Default mode

As its name implies, default mode is how Magento operates if no other mode is specified. Default mode enables you to deploy the Magento application on a single server without changing any settings. However, default mode is not as optimized for production as is production mode.

To deploy the Magento application on more than one server or to optimize it for production, change to one of the other modes.

In default mode:

Errors are logged to the file reports at server, and never shown to a user
Static view files are cached
Default mode is not optimized for a production environment, primarily because of the adverse performance impact of static files being dynamically generated rather than materialized. In other words, creating static files and caching them has a greater performance impact than generating them using the static files creation tool.

For more information, see Set the Magento mode.

Developer mode

Run Magento in developer mode when you are extending or customizing it.

In developer mode:

Static view files are not cached; they are written to the Magento pub/static directory every time they’re called
Uncaught exceptions display in the browser
System logging in var/report is verbose
An exception is thrown in the error handler, rather than being logged
An exception is thrown when an event subscriber cannot be invoked

For more information, see Set the Magento mode.

Production mode

Run Magento in production mode when it is deployed to a production server. After optimizing the server environment, such as the database and web server, you should run the static view files deployment tool to write static view files to the Magento pub/static directory.

This improves performance by providing all necessary static files at deployment instead of forcing Magento to dynamically locate and copy (materialize) static files on demand during run time.

In production mode:

Static view files are not materialized, and URLs for them are composed on the fly. Static view files are served from the cache only.
Errors are logged to the file system and are never displayed to the user.
You can enable and disable cache types only using the command line.

You cannot enable or disable cache types using the Magento Admin

Maintenance mode

Run Magento in maintenance mode to take your site offline while you complete maintenance, upgrade, or configuration tasks. In maintenance mode, the site redirects visitors to a default Service Temporarily Unavailable page.

You can create a custom maintenance page, manually enable and disable maintenance mode, and configure maintenance mode to allow visitors from authorized IP addresses to view the store normally. See enable and disable maintenance mode.

If you are using Magento Commerce Cloud, the Magento application runs in maintenance mode during the deploy phase. When the deployment completes successfully, Magento returns to running in production mode. See Deployment hooks.