What Is a Flaky Test? Causes and Fixes

Matthewallen23 Jul, 2026Technology

A test fails. You go looking for what broke, a new commit, a config change, or a dependency bump, and find nothing. You rerun the exact same test against the exact same code, and it passes. Run it a few more times over the week, and it fails again, seemingly at random. That's a flaky test: one that produces different results, pass, then fail, then pass again, without any change to the code or the test itself.