The connection between the discrete and the continuous coagulation–fragmentation models is investigated. A weak stability principle relying on a priori estimates and weak compactness in L1 is developed for the continuous model. We approximate the continuous model by a sequence of discrete models and, writing the discrete models as modified continuous ones, we prove the convergence of the latter towards the former with the help of the above-mentioned stability principle. Another application of this stability principle is the convergence of an explicit time and size discretization of the continuous coagulation-fragmentation model.