Acceptance criteria and definition of done are both about quality, but they operate at different levels. Confusing them leads to inconsistent quality, recurring rework, and sprint review surprises.
Acceptance criteria: story-specific
Acceptance criteria describe what a specific user story must achieve to be accepted by the Product Owner. They vary from story to story. A login story has different acceptance criteria than an export story.
Example: "Given a user with an expired session, when they try to access a protected page, then they are redirected to login."
Definition of done: team-wide
The definition of done is a shared checklist that applies to every story, every sprint, without exception. It typically includes things like: code reviewed, unit tests written, no new lint errors, deployed to staging, product owner accepted.
The DoD enforces baseline quality. Acceptance criteria enforce story-specific correctness.
How they interact
A story is done when it meets both its acceptance criteria and the team's definition of done. Passing acceptance criteria is not enough if the code was never reviewed. Meeting the DoD is not enough if the story does not behave correctly.
Common mistakes
Including DoD items in every story's acceptance criteria: this creates redundancy. Pull shared quality standards into the DoD and keep acceptance criteria story-specific.
Having no DoD and using acceptance criteria as a quality gate: this means quality is story-by-story rather than consistent. Some stories will ship reviewed; others will not.
Never updating the DoD: as the team matures, the DoD should get stricter. If automated tests are not in the DoD, add them.
Practical rule of thumb
If a criterion would apply to every story ("code must be reviewed"), put it in the DoD. If it is specific to this story ("when the file is over 10MB, show an error"), put it in the acceptance criteria.
Generate acceptance criteria for your next story with our free acceptance criteria generator.
Related reading: What is acceptance criteria · Definition of done guide · Gherkin format.