Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. The user equipment (UE) may initiate a successive cancellation list (SCL) decoding procedure, and may perform the SCL decoding procedure across various nodes (e.g., for each information bit through a decoding tree). At each node, the UE may determine whether a relationship between a first path metric and a second path metric satisfy a threshold. In some examples, the UE may determine whether multiple thresholds are satisfied. If conditions are satisfied (e.g., the relationship between the two path metrics satisfies a threshold), then the UE may decrease a list size of the SCL decoding.