---
title: "Lifecycle"
slug: "lifecycle-1"
updated: 2026-01-06T21:35:51Z
published: 2026-01-06T21:35:51Z
canonical: "docs.wasabi.com/lifecycle-1"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.wasabi.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Lifecycle

The object lifecyle management feature establishes a lifecycle policy with rules to define actions that you want Wasabi to take during the life of an object. This feature replaces the need to manually delete an object after a retention period.

You can implement lifecycle rules for compliance, internal policy, or general housekeeping. Lifecycle policies can be managed in the Console (as described in the articles in this section), with [AWS CLI](https://docs.wasabi.com/docs/how-to-set-lifecycle-policies-using-the-aws-cli) commands, or using API requests with an application such as [Postman](https://docs.wasabi.com/docs/how-to-set-lifecycle-policies-using-postman).

In addition, note the following:

- Lifecycle management policies are evaluated and run once daily at 00:00 UTC.
- Once a lifecycle management policy is defined, it may take 24-48 hours for it to run.
- For buckets with versioning enabled and with a large number of objects (for example, over 10 million), lifecycle rule processing may require more time to complete.
- Lifecycle rules cannot delete objects that are under retention due to [Object Lock](https://docs.wasabi.com/docs/object-locking-enable).
- Lifecycle rules cannot be created or enabled on S3 buckets with activated [MFA-Delete](https://docs.wasabi.com/apidocs/operations-on-buckets#mfa-multifactor-authentication-delete) because these features are mutually exclusive.