Bacteria cooperate to form multicellular communities and compete against one another for environmental resources. Here, we review recent advances in the understanding of bacterial competition mediated by contact-dependent growth inhibition (CDI) systems. Different CDI+ bacteria deploy a variety of toxins to inhibit neighboring cells and protect themselves from autoinhibition by producing specific immunity proteins. The genes encoding CDI toxin-immunity protein pairs appear to be exchanged between cdi loci and are often associated with other toxin-delivery systems in diverse bacterial species. CDI also appears to facilitate cooperative behavior between kin, suggesting that these systems may have other roles beyond competition.