---
id: cloud/features/smart-orchestration/run-cancellation
title: Auto Cancellation
description: >-
  Cancel entire test runs upon the first failure with Cypress Cloud's Auto
  Cancellation feature.
section: cloud
source_path: docs/cloud/features/smart-orchestration/run-cancellation.mdx
version: ce02913654e2655ee63448bdc92bb92c7b46a619
updated_at: '2026-04-22T19:37:51.587Z'
---
# Auto Cancellation

#####  What you'll learn

- How to enable Auto Cancellation in Cypress Cloud
- How to save time by canceling test runs upon the first failure
- How to reduce CI costs by using Auto Cancellation with Spec Prioritization

Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines are typically costly processes that can
demand significant compute time. **When a test failure occurs in CI, it often
does not make sense to continue running the remainder of a test suite** since
the process has to start again upon merging of subsequent fixes and other code
changes. When Auto Cancellation is enabled, once the number of failed tests goes
over a preset threshold, the entire test run is canceled. Note that any
in-progress specs will continue to run to completion.

**Benefits:** Stopping a test run on
the first failure across parallelized machines will:

1. **Save time.** Identify failures early and resolve issues faster.
2. **Reduce CI costs.** Cut down on unnecessary test execution, leading to significant savings for large test suites.
3. **Free up CI resources.** Prioritize critical tests and keep CI pipelines available for validating fixes.
4. **Optimize future runs.** With **[Spec Prioritization](/llm/markdown/cloud/features/smart-orchestration/spec-prioritization.md)** and **Auto Cancellation**, failed tests run first in the next attempt, stopping early if issues persist to maximize efficiency.

### Activate Auto Cancellation in Cypress Cloud

**Auto Cancellation** is a *Smart Orchestration* feature available to users with
a [Business or Enterprise tier Cypress Cloud plan](https://cypress.io/pricing).
Wondering if upgrading your Team tier subscription is worth it? Check out the
[recommendations](/llm/markdown/cloud/features/recorded-runs.md#Recommendations) on the run
overview page to see how much time we predict these features would save you.

Auto Cancellation is a *Smart Orchestration* feature that is managed within a
project's settings.

Consideration for Teams

If your development, testing, or QA teams operate in a highly collaborative
workflow where multiple people are working on various test failures at the same
time, it may make sense to increase the failures threshold to surface more failures on each test run.

**To enable or disable this feature at the Project level (must be an admin user):**

1. Select the desired project within **Projects** view to visit Cypress Cloud.
2. Click **Project Settings** with the right-hand sidebar.
3. Scroll to the Smart Orchestration section within Project Settings page.
4. Toggle **Auto Cancellation**.
5. Set the **failures before auto canceling** threshold (or just leave it at the
   default value of 1).

CI Tip: Save Time

In addition to Auto Cancellation, consider reducing CI costs further by enabling
[Spec Prioritization](/llm/markdown/cloud/features/smart-orchestration/spec-prioritization.md) to
surface test failures earlier in the run, and reduce the time it takes to fix
issues and deploy changes.

### Specifying failures before auto canceling in the CLI

With the Cypress CLI, you can specify the number of test failures to execute
before canceling the run via a command flag. This allows more granular control
of Auto Cancellation on a per-run basis.

**Some common use cases for doing so might be:**

- Setting a lower-than-normal value on dev environments to fail a test suite
  early for faster feedback
- Disabling Auto Cancellation on important branches that need the full test
  suite to run every time
- Overriding the project value on a case-by-case basis

Specifying the flag will override the project setting in Cypress Cloud, and not
specifying it will default to the value in the project settings.

To set it, pass the `--auto-cancel-after-failures` flag to the `cypress run`
command, and give it a numeric value:

```shell
npx cypress run --record --key <<your_record_key>> --auto-cancel-after-failures 1
```

You can also specify `false` for the value to disable Auto Cancellation for the
run:

```shell
npx cypress run --record --key <<your_record_key>> --auto-cancel-after-failures false
```

For more info on passing CLI flags, see our guide on the
[Cypress Command Line](/llm/markdown/app/references/command-line.md).