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How to stop Netlify building on every push

Netlify has two ways: turn on Stop builds, which stops every build including build hooks, or add an ignore command to netlify.toml that skips every build not started by a build hook. Stop builds is simplest if you deploy from your machine; the ignore command keeps Netlify building, but only when you call the hook.

Last updated 10 November 2026 · by Patrick Schmetzer, author of Deploy Center

1. Stop builds

1. Open the site, then Site configuration → Build & deploy → Continuous deployment.
2. Under Build settings, choose Configure, then Stop builds, and save.
3. Build locally or in CI and upload the result:

netlify build
netlify deploy --prod

The same switch is the stop_builds field in the site's build settings in the Netlify API:

curl -s -X PATCH "https://api.netlify.com/api/v1/sites/$SITE_ID" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"build_settings":{"stop_builds":true}}'

2. An ignore command that only lets build hooks through

Netlify runs the ignore command before each build: exit 0 cancels, exit 1 builds. For builds started by a build hook, Netlify sets INCOMING_HOOK_TITLE (and INCOMING_HOOK_URL, INCOMING_HOOK_BODY); for pushes it is empty. So this skips everything except hook builds:

# netlify.toml
[build]
  ignore = 'test -z "$INCOMING_HOOK_TITLE"'

test -z exits 0 when the variable is empty (a push: skip) and 1 when it is set (a hook: build). Single quotes make it a literal TOML string, so the double quotes reach the shell unchanged.

1. Create a hook: Site configuration → Build & deploy → Continuous deployment → Build hooks → Add build hook. Pick the branch to build.
2. Commit the netlify.toml above. That push is the last one that builds by itself.
3. Deploy when you want:

curl -s -X POST -d '{}' "https://api.netlify.com/build_hooks/$HOOK_ID"

Only some branches

To keep deploy previews and only stop production builds from pushes, check the context Netlify sets in CONTEXT:

[build]
  ignore = '[ "$CONTEXT" = production ] && [ -z "$INCOMING_HOOK_TITLE" ]'

Netlify in Deploy Center

Deploy Center supports Netlify as an opt-in host, built on the build hook approach above. Turn it on with deploys providers enable netlify, store a personal access token with deploys netlify set-key, then run deploys netlify autodeploy-off <site>: it creates a build hook named deploy-center and prints the ignore line for netlify.toml. Deploy Center accepts the rule ignore = "[ -z \"$INCOMING_HOOK_TITLE\" ]", which skips every build a build hook did not start. Setup, limits and what it cannot do: the Netlify provider docs.

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