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Full node
A full node is software that downloads every Bitcoin block and checks every transaction against the network's rules for itself. Running one lets you confirm your own payments without relying on someone else's server, and it passes valid blocks and transactions on to other nodes.
What it means for you. A wallet connected to your own full node checks incoming payments with your own copy of the rules instead of asking an outside server, so you learn whether a payment is valid without taking anyone's word for it. The cost is disk space, monthly bandwidth and a first sync that can take a long time.
Sources: Running a full node (bitcoin.org), Bitcoin vocabulary (bitcoin.org) · checked 4 October 2026
Pruned node
A pruned node is a Bitcoin full node that checks every block like any other but deletes old block data once it has been processed. It keeps only recent blocks plus the database of unspent coins, so it needs a small fraction of the disk space of a node that keeps everything.
What it means for you. A pruned node verifies your payments by the same rules as an unpruned one, but it cannot serve old blocks to other nodes and cannot rescan blocks it has deleted, which matters if you import or restore an older wallet on it.
Sources: Bitcoin Core 0.11.0 release notes (block file pruning), Running a full node (bitcoin.org) · checked 4 October 2026