Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described for dynamic frozen bits of polar codes for early termination and performance improvement. A wireless device may receive a signal comprising a codeword encoded using a polar code. The wireless device may perform decoding of the codeword including at least: parity check of a first subset of decoding paths for making a decision on early termination of decoding of the codeword based on dynamic frozen bits, and generating path metrics for a second subset of the decoding paths that each pass the parity check based on the dynamic frozen bits, and performing error detection on a bit sequence corresponding to one of the second subset of the decoding paths based at part on error detection bits and the generated path metrics. The wireless device may process the information bits based on a result of the decoding.