The first of these categories, slavery, is the actual ownership of one human being by another. Slaves shared no rights with the free population and were considered property. Except on rare occasions, these people would be slaves for their entire lives with no hope of ever being free.
Serfdom varies from slavery in many ways.
Serfs, like slaves, hold little hope of improving their status, but unlike slaves, serfs could actually possess their means of livelihood. They would live on the landholder's land, often paying rent, bound by law or by contract to the land on which they worked. Serfs were not free to leave the land to which they were bound even if they so wished. The third form of unfree labor was debt bondage. In this case, the debtor would pay back a debt through his services if he could not settle it by any other means.