$ ~/cicdcalculator

Is CircleCI free?
./yes-with-limits --30000-credits --2026

By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Founder, Digital Signet·Verified June 2026
Direct answer

Yes, CircleCI is free, with limits. The Free plan includes 30,000 compute credits per month, which is about 6,000 build minutes on the default-small Docker runner or roughly 3,000 minutes on medium, plus 5 active users and 30x concurrency. Because CircleCI meters in credits, bigger machines drain the pool far faster. Past the free credits you buy more ($15 per 25,000) or move to Performance ($15/month).

Free credits
30,000 / mo
Small Docker
~6,000 min
Active users
5 included
Extra credits
$15 / 25K

What the free tier includes

The CircleCI Free plan is a monthly credit pool plus a seat allowance. The credits are an org-level pool, not a per-user grant, so they do not grow as active users approach the five-seat cap.

PlanSeatIncluded credits / moActive usersConcurrency
Free$030,000530x
PerformanceFrom $15 / mo30,000 incl, +$15 / 25K5 incl, +$15 each80x
ScaleCustomVolume contractCustomCustom

Allowances per the CircleCI pricing page, checked July 2026. Free also includes 1 GB network egress and 2 GB storage; extra network and storage are billed. An active user is anyone who triggers a pipeline that month.

What burns your 30,000 credits

Credits are consumed per minute at a rate set by the resource class. The default is medium Docker, so the honest planning figure is 3,000 free minutes, not the 6,000 you get only on the small class. Switch to a bigger machine and the effective free minutes collapse.

Resource classCredits / minEffective free minutes
Small Docker (1 CPU)56,000
Medium Docker (default)103,000
Large Docker (4 CPU)201,500
X-Large (Linux VM, 8 CPU)100300
Medium (Windows)40750
M4 Pro Medium (macOS)200150
M4 Pro Large (macOS)40075

Credit rates per the CircleCI pricing page, checked July 2026. Effective minutes = 30,000 credits divided by the per-minute rate. Self-hosted runners consume no credits.

When do you start paying?

Anyone on self-hosted runners
Never for compute
Self-hosted runners consume no credits, so heavy Linux or macOS workloads run without touching the 30,000-credit pool. You still need a paid plan once you cross five active users.
Small team on medium Docker
~Month 1
5 devs running 25 builds/day at 6 min each is about 3,150 minutes a month, or 31,500 credits, just past the 30,000 free pool. A few credit packs cover the overage.
iOS team on macOS
~Day 2
M4 Pro Medium burns 200 credits/min, so the free pool is only ~150 macOS minutes. A single day of iOS builds clears it. macOS teams either pay from day one or self-host a Mac.

When a Free org exhausts its 30,000 credits, pipelines stop until the next monthly reset unless you buy more. Additional credits are $15 per 25,000 ($0.0006 per credit) on any plan, and the Performance plan at $15/month adds a second 30,000-credit base, 80x concurrency and per-user scaling. The credits are org-level, so consolidating projects and right-sizing resource classes stretches the free pool further than any single tweak.

Keep going

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Frequently Asked Questions

# click any question to expand

Is CircleCI free?>
Yes, with limits. The Free plan includes 30,000 compute credits per month, which is about 6,000 build minutes on the default small Docker resource class (5 credits per minute) or roughly 3,000 minutes on medium (10 credits per minute). It also includes 5 active users, 30x concurrency, and access to every resource class including macOS and self-hosted runners. Beyond the 30,000 credits you buy more ($15 per 25,000 pack) or move to the Performance plan, which starts at $15 per month.
How many free build minutes do you get on CircleCI?>
It depends on the machine, because CircleCI meters in credits, not minutes. The Free plan's 30,000 monthly credits translate to about 6,000 minutes on a small Docker runner (5 credits per minute), 3,000 minutes on medium (10 credits per minute), 1,500 minutes on large (20 credits per minute), and only about 150 minutes on a macOS M4 Pro Medium runner (200 credits per minute). The default resource class is medium, so most teams should plan around the 3,000-minute figure, not the headline 6,000.
How many users does the CircleCI Free plan allow?>
The Free plan includes 5 active users per month. An active user is anyone who triggers at least one pipeline in the billing month, so a larger team where only five people push code in a given month still fits inside Free. Past five active users you move to the Performance plan, which includes 5 active users at its $15 base and charges $15 for each additional active user (billed as 25,000 credits per extra user).
Do bigger machines use CircleCI free credits faster?>
Yes, dramatically. Credit consumption scales with the resource class: small Docker is 5 credits per minute, medium 10, large 20, and Linux VM x-large 100. Windows medium is 40 credits per minute and macOS M4 Pro runs 200 (Medium) to 400 (Large) credits per minute. So the same 30,000 free credits are worth 6,000 minutes on small Docker but only about 75 minutes on a macOS M4 Pro Large runner. iOS teams exhaust the free tier almost immediately for this reason.
Are CircleCI self-hosted runners free?>
Self-hosted runner usage does not consume compute credits, so once your build volume is high the runners you register on your own infrastructure effectively run for free apart from the underlying compute you pay your cloud provider for. This is the standard way heavy CircleCI users, especially macOS-heavy iOS teams, sidestep the credit meter. The trade-off is that some cloud-only features such as Docker layer caching and CircleCI machine images do not apply to self-hosted runners.
When do you start paying for CircleCI?>
You start paying when you either exceed 5 active users in a month or burn through the 30,000 free credits. On the default medium Docker runner, 30,000 credits is about 3,000 minutes: a 5-developer team running 25 builds a day at 6 minutes each uses roughly 3,150 minutes a month, so it crosses the free credit pool near the end of the first month. At that point you buy credit packs ($15 per 25,000, or $0.0006 per credit) or move to the Performance plan at $15 per month.