---
title: "What are the differences between deadlock, livelock, and starvation in async .NET?"  
description: "What are the differences between deadlock, livelock, and starvation in async .NET?"  
author: "Anubhav Sharma"  
published: 2026-09-21  
canonical: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117247/what-are-the-differences-between-deadlock-livelock-and-starvation-in-async-net  
category: "Concepts"  
tags: ["concurrency", "diagnostics", ".NET"]  
reading_time: 1 minute  

---

# What are the differences between deadlock, livelock, and starvation in async .NET?

## Sorting Out the Terms

People throw around "[deadlock](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/104821/whats-an-oracle-deadlock)" when they mean several different concurrency problems. In async .NET, the distinctions matter because the fix for each is radically different.

### Deadlock

Two or more tasks wait indefinitely for each other to release a lock or complete a continuation. Classic example: Task A awaits Task B, and Task B awaits Task A, with both holding locks.

### Livelock

Tasks are active and responding, but make no progress. They keep retrying an operation, yielding to each other in a loop. Think of two async methods that back off and retry on conflict forever.

### Starvation

A task is ready to run but never gets scheduled because higher-priority work monopolizes the thread pool. In async code, this often looks like a low-priority background task that never fires because the pool is saturated with CPU-bound work.

Profiling tells you which one you have. Deadlock shows threads in wait states. Livelock shows high CPU with no I/O completion. Starvation shows tasks queued but never dequeued.


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Original Source: https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/117247/what-are-the-differences-between-deadlock-livelock-and-starvation-in-async-net

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