<p>How cells control their size and maintain size homeostasis is a fundamental open question. Cell-size homeostasis has been discussed in the context of two major paradigms: “sizer,” in which the cell actively monitors its size and triggers the cell cycle once it reaches a critical size, and “timer,” in which the cell attempts to grow for a specific amount of time before division. These paradigms, in conjunction with the “growth law” and the quantitative bacterial cell-cycle model, inspired numerous theoretical models and experimental investigations, from growth to cell cycle and size control. However, experimental evidence involved difficult-to-verify assumptions or population-averaged data, which allowed different interpretations or limited conclusions. In particular, population-averaged data and correlations are inconclusive as the averaging process masks causal effects at the cellular level. In this work, we extended a microfluidic “mother machine” and monitored hundreds of thousands of Gram-negative <em>Escherichia coli</em> and Gram-positive <em>Bacillus subtilis</em> cells under a wide range of steady-state growth conditions. Our combined experimental results and quantitative analysis demonstrate that cells add a constant volume each generation, irrespective of their newborn sizes, conclusively supporting the so-called constant Δ model. This model was introduced for <em>E. coli</em> and recently revisited, but experimental evidence was limited to correlations. This “adder” principle quantitatively explains experimental data at both the population and single-cell levels, including the origin and the hierarchy of variability in the size-control mechanisms and how cells maintain size homeostasis.</p