What is the difference between Change Sets and Unlocked Packages?

Change Sets: Manual, point-and-click metadata migration between connected orgs. No version control, no CI/CD integration, cannot delete metadata, limited metadata type support. Good for simple, infrequent deployments. Unlocked Packages: Part of Salesforce DX and second-generation packaging (2GP). Metadata is version-controlled in source code. Packages are versioned artifacts installed independently in any org. Supports deletion of metadata, dependency management, and CI/CD pipelines. Packages can be updated incrementally. Unlocked Packages are the modern standard for scalable, team-based development. They offer traceability (you know exactly what version is installed in each org) and repeatability that change sets cannot provide.