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p50 Latency - CI/CD Glossary Definition

p50 latency (the 50th percentile, or median) is the value below which half of measured latencies fall. It describes the typical experience: half of CI jobs start (or finish) faster than the p50, half slower. It is robust to outliers, unlike the mean.

Why percentiles beat averages

An average can be dragged up by a few slow jobs and hide the typical case, or dragged down and hide a bad tail. Reporting p50 alongside p99 gives both the common experience and the worst-case. For runner pickup time, p50 tells you how fast jobs usually start; p99 tells you how bad the unlucky waits get.

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