CloudFormation and CDK express mode makes deploys up to 4x faster!

Hey everyone, it's Shii-chan! Today I've got great news for anyone who wants to build infrastructure faster.

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

Over on AWS's What's New, AWS CloudFormation and CDK gained a new "express mode"! According to AWS internal benchmarks, it can cut deployment time by up to 4x. It helps not just developers, but also AI agents that build infrastructure.

The story so far

Until now, every single deployment waited for resources to fully stabilize. For example, creating a CloudFront distribution meant waiting 5-10 minutes for it to propagate to all edge locations before the deploy finished, even when you only needed the distribution's domain name to keep going.

What changes

With express mode, a stack operation completes the moment CloudFormation confirms the configuration is applied. It no longer waits on long stabilization checks like traffic readiness, region propagation, and resource cleanup, so operations finish in seconds while propagation continues in the background. That makes the build-a-little-and-test loop in dev environments much faster!

Dive Deep

Using it is simple. When you create, update, or delete stacks, or create a change set through the AWS CLI, SDKs, or the Management Console, just set:

--deployment-config '{"mode": "EXPRESS"}'

If you use AWS CDK, it's even easier: turn it on with cdk deploy --express. No template changes are needed, and it works with your existing CloudFormation templates and nested stacks.

CloudFormation still processes resources in dependency order and still handles failures of dependent resources within the same stack. One important note: express mode disables rollback by default, so you can fix and retry right away without waiting for a rollback to finish.

It's available in all AWS Regions where CloudFormation is supported. Check the Region table for details, and see the express mode documentation if you want to learn more.

Wrap-up

• Express mode arrives for CloudFormation and CDK, up to 4x faster deploys (AWS internal benchmarks)
• Completes once configuration is applied instead of waiting for long stabilization checks; propagation continues in the background
• Turn it on with --deployment-config '{"mode": "EXPRESS"}' or cdk deploy --express, no template changes needed
• Rollback is disabled by default, enabling fix-and-retry right away
• A handy win for developers and AI agents that iterate on infrastructure over and over!