SOP vs Runbook: What's the Difference? (2026 Guide)

An SOP describes how to perform a recurring task on a normal schedule — refunding a customer, closing the books, publishing a blog post. A runbook describes how to respond to a specific incident when something has already broken — an outage, a security event, a payment-processor failure. Both matter; both belong in your library; and confusing them is why some teams end up with 'SOPs' that only get opened during outages. Keep them in the same tool ([Haiku](/reviews/haiku), [Scribe](/reviews/scribe)), just tagged differently. See the [IT incident response runbook template](/templates/it-incident-response-runbook) for a filled example.