$ ~/cicdcalculator

Free CI/CD platforms in 2026
./free --every-free-tier --side-by-side

Every major CI/CD platform has a free tier. They are not equally generous. This page lists every meaningful free option in 2026, the actual allowance you get, and the catches that turn into a paid bill if you ignore them. If you are looking for the cheapest way to get your first pipeline running, or evaluating what you might consume on a free tier before adopting a platform, the answers are below.

All numbers come from each vendor's public pricing page in May 2026. The hosted-CI free tiers are subject to change without notice; verify current offerings on the vendor sites before committing.

Hosted CI free tiers

PlatformPrivate allowancePublic allowanceCatch
GitHub Actions Free2,000 Linux mins / moUnlimitedStorage 500 MB cap
GitLab Free400 mins / group / moLimited (OSS programme)Far less than GitHub on private
CircleCI Free6,000 credits / mo (~600 mins)OSS credits programmeModest allowance
Bitbucket Pipelines Free50 mins / moEffectively unlimited publicTiny private allowance
Buildkite DeveloperUnlimited builds (5 users, 3 agents)Unlimited publicYou pay agent compute

Self-hosted free options

Software is free; you pay only the compute and operator time. Cheapest direct cost for a small team is around $15-30 monthly for a single-VM setup.

PlatformLicenceMin infra costOperator time
JenkinsMIT$30-80 / mo4-12 hrs / mo
GitLab CEMIT-style$30-80 / mo2-8 hrs / mo
Drone CIApache 2.0$15-30 / mo1-3 hrs / mo
Woodpecker CIApache 2.0$15-30 / mo1-3 hrs / mo
TeamCity ProfessionalFree for 3 agents / 100 configs$30-80 / mo2-6 hrs / mo

# TeamCity Professional has hard caps on agents (3) and build configs (100). Beyond those, you upgrade to Server which costs $1,999 per year.

Choosing a free tier by use case

For a solo developer or 2-3 person early-stage team on private repos: GitHub Actions Free is the right answer almost always. Two thousand monthly Linux minutes covers typical small-team usage. The platform-fee-included rate of $0.010 per minute beyond the allowance is reasonable. Stay on Free, monitor monthly usage, upgrade to Team when consistent overage starts.

For an open-source project on GitHub: GitHub Actions Free with public repos is unmatched. Unlimited Linux, Windows and macOS minutes for OSS workflows. Most successful OSS projects run their entire CI on this allocation without any vendor cost.

For an Atlassian-stack team evaluating Bitbucket Cloud: Bitbucket Free is intentionally tiny (50 monthly minutes). You will need Standard ($3 per user) almost immediately. The 3,500 included monthly minutes on Standard is the realistic free-equivalent for serious usage.

For a privacy-conscious team that cannot use SaaS CI: self-hosted Drone CI on a single VM is the lightest-weight self-hosted option. Single-binary controller, Docker-native pipelines, well-documented setup. Operator load is small at low volume.

For a team that wants to run a meaningful CI on Buildkite without committing: Buildkite Developer with three agents is enough to run a small production pipeline. The catch is the agent compute (around $30 per agent monthly on EC2) but the platform itself is free up to 5 users.

The traps to avoid

GitLab Free's tiny private-repo allowance catches teams migrating from other platforms expecting comparable headroom. If your team needs more than 400 monthly CI minutes per group, plan to use either self-hosted runners (free at the platform level) or upgrade to Premium (which is expensive at small team sizes).

Bitbucket Pipelines Free is essentially evaluation-only. The 50-minute monthly allowance is gone after a few CI runs. Teams adopting Bitbucket Cloud for source-control should budget for Standard ($3 per user) immediately rather than counting on the Free tier.

Self-hosted is not free. Software cost is zero, infrastructure is small, but operator time is real and dominates total cost at small scale. A team that thinks they have free CI on Drone or Jenkins is implicitly paying $300-1,200 monthly in operator time at fully loaded engineering rates. Account for it honestly.

Free tiers change. CircleCI revised free-tier credit allowances multiple times in 2023-2025. GitLab tightened OSS programme eligibility in 2024. Read the current pricing page before committing to a platform on the strength of its free tier; the offer in 2026 may not be the offer in 2027.

Related deep dives

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Frequently Asked Questions

# click any question to expand

Which CI/CD platform has the most generous free tier in 2026?>
For private repositories: GitHub Actions Free at 2,000 monthly Linux minutes is the best mainstream offering. For public repositories: GitHub Actions Free is unlimited, which is unmatched. For self-hosted-without-licence-fee: Jenkins, Drone CI, GitLab CE and Woodpecker CI are all entirely free as software (you pay only the compute). The 'most generous' answer depends on whether you can self-host and whether your repos are private.
Is GitHub Actions truly unlimited on public repos?>
Yes. Public-repository workflows on github.com get unlimited build minutes on GitHub-hosted Linux, Windows and macOS runners on the Free plan. The unlimited applies to every plan above Free as well, but Free is enough for OSS projects. The fair-use policy reserves the right to throttle abuse, but for any honest open-source workload there is no practical limit.
What is the catch with GitLab Free?>
Two catches. First, the per-group included minutes are tiny: 400 monthly minutes versus GitHub Actions' 2,000 for private repos. Second, GitLab.com Free has had on-and-off limits on contributors per group, OSS programmes and storage. Read the current pricing page carefully. For self-hosted, GitLab CE has none of these limits because you operate your own runners.
How does Buildkite Developer compare?>
Buildkite Developer is free for up to five users with three concurrent agents. Build minutes are unlimited at the platform level (Buildkite charges per seat, not per minute). The catch is that the agents run on your infrastructure, so you pay the AWS or GCP bill for the agent VMs. A small team running one always-on Linux agent on a $30 EC2 instance has effectively a $30 monthly Buildkite-via-Developer bill.
What about CircleCI Free?>
CircleCI Free includes 6,000 monthly credits, equivalent to roughly 600 Linux Medium build minutes. Modest by comparison to GitHub Actions Free's 2,000 minutes. Best as an evaluation tier or for very low-volume workloads. Most teams that pick CircleCI for production move to Performance ($15 per user with 25,000 included credits per user) within their first few months.
Is self-hosted Drone or Jenkins genuinely free?>
The software is genuinely free. The compute is not. A small Drone CI setup on a $15-30 EC2 instance is the cheapest non-managed option. Self-hosted Jenkins on similar infrastructure is comparable, with slightly higher operator overhead. For tiny teams or hobby projects on a budget, both are workable; for production teams, the operator time at full engineering rates dominates the dollar saving.
What is the cheapest path for a startup CI/CD?>
GitHub Actions Free for the first year, with the team staying inside 2,000 monthly Linux minutes by being deliberate about caching and conditional jobs. Once usage grows past free, upgrade to Team ($4 per user) and continue staying inside its 3,000 included minutes. This path costs $0-200 monthly for most early-stage teams up to about 25 developers.