“We’ve been working to make Netflix a great home for comedians to do their best work and to support their live performance careers, and having Aziz debut his new show with us is a validation of that strategy,” Ted Sarandos, the chief content officer for Netflix, said in an e-mail.

Mr. Ansari’s special was taped in Philadelphia in April. He said the material was “a lot more mature” than that in his previous specials, focusing on the differences between the friends his age who are getting married and having children, and himself, a commitment-phobic comedian. “All that stuff seems very far away for me,” he said. His first book, announced last week by the Penguin Press, will tackle similar themes about single life, but with new material.

Mr. Ansari plans to release “Buried Alive” as a $5 download, but only after the Netflix premiere. The straight-to-fans strategy, pioneered by Louis C. K. in 2011, was successful for Mr. Ansari last year, he said, but its downside was obvious: “You’re kind of preaching to the choir.”

He added, as modestly as possible, “I have a pretty big choir.” But with the new special, he said, “my goal is to get people that don’t know my stuff already, and maybe expand my audience.”

That’s where Netflix comes in. The service has more than 30 million subscribers in the United States, and its algorithms for recommending shows keep improving. Mr. Ansari said that when he was at home using Netflix, his own shows are recommended to him all the time.

Unlike, say, passive viewers of Comedy Central, though, Netflix watchers requires at least a bit of action, which is a potential drawback for some. On Sunday Mr. Birbiglia told his Twitter followers that “apparently the only way to find” his Netflix special “is if you type in my last name.”

Mr. Ansari’s “Buried Alive” was filmed and edited before Netflix entered the picture. He said he bumped into Mr. Sarandos at an event in New York, and he commented on the popularity of Mr. Ansari’s past specials. That conversation led to the distribution deal. (Neither side would comment on the financial terms.)

“It’s an interesting time for someone to be releasing content,” Mr. Ansari said. “No one’s quite figured out things. You can do all types of things. At this moment, it really seems like Netflix is the way to go.”