Glossary/Measurement & Attribution/Multi-Armed Bandit
Measurement & Attribution
Multi-Armed Bandit
An adaptive testing method that shifts traffic toward better-performing variants during a test, trading some statistical certainty for less wasted traffic.
By Brandon Mina·CEO, BrandPilot AI·Updated November 2026
Short answer
A multi-armed bandit is an adaptive testing method that shifts traffic toward better-performing variants while a test is still running. Rather than splitting traffic evenly until the end, it balances exploring options with exploiting the current leader. This reduces traffic wasted on weak variants, at the cost of some statistical certainty about the final result.