Every software team needs CI/CD, but build minutes add up fast. GitHub Actions is the default choice with 2,000 free minutes/month for private repos and unlimited for public, and self-hosted runners stay free after GitHub postponed a planned $0.002/min charge. GitLab CI cut its free tier to 400 minutes/month. CircleCI offers 30K credits/month (~6K minutes) but requires a credit card for some features.
This page compares every free CI/CD option in our index — 38 tools across general-purpose platforms, container-native pipelines, mobile CI/CD, and infrastructure automation. Whether you need cloud-hosted runners or self-hosted pipelines, we have the comparison with exact free tier limits.
Recent CI/CD Pricing Changes
Bitrise: Bitrise changed its Hobby plan on November 9, 2026. Hobby now has unlimited team members, where it was for a team of ... Source ↗
GitHub Actions: On 2025-12-17 GitHub postponed the $0.002-a-minute charge for self-hosted Actions runners that it had announced the d... Source ↗
Full-featured CI/CD platforms with cloud-hosted runners, pipeline configuration, and integrations. These cover most use cases — from simple test-and-deploy to complex multi-stage pipelines.
Free CI/CD for public repos (standard runners, unlimited minutes). Private repos on GitHub Free: $12 USD of included compute a month, which is 2,000 minutes on a standard Linux runner ($0.006/min), 1,200 on Windows ($0.010/min) or about 193 on macOS ($0.062/min). GitHub's billing docs gave the allowance as 2,000 minutes before a revision published on October 28, 2026. 500 MB artifact storage, 10 GB cache per repo. Self-hosted runners remain free — planned $0.002/min charge was postponed indefinitely after community backlash (March 2026). Hosted runner prices reduced 39% (Jan 2026)
The Free plan includes 30,000 credits/month, 5 active users, and options for different resource classes (Docker, Windows, Linux, Arm, macOS) with varying concurrency levels (30x for Docker, Linux, Arm, Windows VM, and macOS VM).
The Free Plan offers up to 5 users, up to 10 concurrent jobs, up to 2,000 Linux vCPU minutes per month, up to 250k test executions per month, 30 days build retention, and 50GB/month artifact storage.
CI/CD pipeline automation — free plan: 1 seat, 2 concurrent pipeline runs, a $1 monthly usage credit for compute and storage, 1 GB pipeline cache.
A free account counts as active only if someone logs in to Buddy's web app. Pipeline runs triggered by commits or webhooks do not count. After a month without a login Buddy emails the owner. 30 days after that email the account is suspended and marked for deletion, and 60 days after it the account and its repositories are deleted. (From buddy.works/terms-of-service, read 2026-10-21.)
CI/CD platform — free plan: 2,000 Harness Cloud credits a month that expire monthly, 2,000 minutes on the 2-core Linux machine and 1,000 on the 4-core one. Harness Cloud on the Free plan needs a business email address and credit card validation. Builds on your own machine with the local runner have no limits. Paid plans have no published price.
CD service for Windows, free for Open SourceThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-11, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Free for public GitHub repositoriesWe could not read the page we cite for this offer when we last looked, on 2026-11-10, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Docker-first and Kubernetes-native CI/CD tools. Built for containerized workflows, GitOps, and cloud-native deployments. Many are open source with self-hosted options.
Free OSS (Apache 2.0). Community fork of Drone CI. Container-native CI/CD with YAML pipelines, multi-platform support, Gitea/Forgejo/GitHub/GitLab integrationThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-10, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Container-native CI/CD (now part of Harness) — free open-source edition (self-hosted): unlimited users and concurrency, YAML pipelines, Docker-based builds. Cloud available free for open-source projectsThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-10, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
There is no free tier: codefresh.io and its pricing page redirect to Octopus Deploy, which acquired Codefresh in February 2024. Checked 2026-09-30, Octopus offers Codefresh CI through its sales team and names no free plan or price for it.
Google Cloud's Terms of Service grant use for customer applications with material value independent of the services. The terms restrict resale and circumventing fees but do not prohibit commercial use. (From cloud.google.com/terms, read 2026-10-29.)
Google Cloud's terms prohibit creating multiple projects to simulate a single project or circumvent usage limits. (From cloud.google.com/terms, read 2026-11-07.)
Cloud Build charges $0.006 per minute for an e2-standard-2 build in the default pool. Partial minutes are billed at the actual number of seconds consumed. Queued time is not billed. (From cloud.google.com/build/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
The 2,500 free build-minutes per month apply to e2-standard-2 machine types in the default pool. Google calls this a promotional free tier and says its limit is subject to change. (From cloud.google.com/build/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
Specialized CI/CD for iOS, Android, Flutter, and React Native apps. Handle code signing, device testing, and app store distribution that general-purpose tools struggle with.
Mobile CI/CD platform — free Hobby plan: 500 build minutes/month on Linux or macOS, 1 private app, unlimited public apps, unlimited team members, 1 free on-prem runner, 90-minute build timeout. Supports iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native
Bitrise's Hobby plan requires a verified credit card. Verification is a $0 authorization that is never charged, and a new account verifies the card before its first six builds run out. Without a card, Bitrise support can review an account by hand. (From bitrise.io/hobby-plan, read 2026-11-10.)
On the Hobby plan, builds past the 500 monthly minutes need Pay-As-You-Go switched on. Pay-As-You-Go charges each minute at 1.5 times the base rate, up to $15 a month. At the $15 cap, no new builds start until the next billing cycle. (From bitrise.io/pricing, read 2026-11-10.)
Apps may only be distributed through Bitrise for internal testing, such as quality assurance, never for general use. (From bitrise.io/legal/acceptable-use-policy, read 2026-10-06.)
Mobile CI/CD platform — Single-user plan with unlimited number of applications and 500 free build minutes a month on macOS M2 machines, for personal accounts only; Linux and Windows builds get no free minutes, and teams get none. 30 days build history & artifact storage, 3GB per build cache storage.
Mobile CI/CD and distribution — free Starter plan: 20 builds/month, 1 concurrent build, 30-minute max build time, unlimited apps, 1,000 CodePush updates/month, 100 testing distribution downloads/month
Deploy your app on AWS/GCP/Azure in under 30 minutes. Setup standardised app environments on any cloud, which come with in-built continuous deployment automation and advanced observability. The free plan allows 3 users, 2 environments, 2 cloud connections, 5 services per environment, and 200 build-deploy minutes per month.
workflow automation and merge queue for GitHub — Free for public GitHub repositoriesWhen we read the page we cite for this offer on 2026-10-23, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, and we have read it again since, on 2026-11-13, without confirming them, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Nx Cloud speeds up your monorepos on CI with features such as remote caching, distribution of tasks across machines and even automated splitting of your e2e test runs. Its free Hobby plan includes 50,000 credits a month, 5 complimentary contributors and 10 concurrent CI connections.
Terramate is an orchestration and management platform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, OpenTofu, and Terragrunt. Free up to 2 users including all features.The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-11, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Stategraph, formerly Terrateam: terrateam.io redirects to stategraph.com. Infrastructure-as-code orchestration for GitHub and GitLab, with Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Pulumi, CDKTF or any CLI. Free hosted plan: 3 users, 50 runs (plans or applies) a month, 1 concurrent worker, 30-day audit retention and community support, with every Orchestration feature, including SSO, RBAC, drift detection, cost estimation and OPA, Conftest and Checkov policies. No credit card. The self-hosted open-source edition (MPL-2.0) is free for up to 3 active users a month per GitHub or GitLab installation, with unlimited runs and concurrent workers.
Version control + build automation — 25 GB storage (5x increase Mar 2026), 100 GB egress (new Mar 2026), no seat charges (removed Mar 2026). Build: 200 Windows + 100 Mac minutes/month. Includes Plastic SCM for version control. No egress charges through April 2026We could not read the page we cite for this offer when we last looked, on 2026-11-13, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
Pull request preview environments, formerly with a free plan. No free tier. tugboatqa.com/pricing, read 2026-10-18, prices every plan: Intro $39/month (15GB storage, 1GB RAM, 1 CPU), Plus $119/month, Premium from $599/month. All plans include unlimited users and unlimited previews.
Automated deployment platform — free plan: 1 project, 3 deployments per day, 5 servers, 1 concurrent deployment, 30 build minutes, 1 user. Unlimited deployments and 3 projects start at $9/mo (Solo). Open-source projects can ask for a free account with unlimited deployments. Git-based workflow with support for FTP/SFTP/SSH deployment targets
Now RunJob — runmyjob.io redirects to runjob.eu, which serves the same product. Cloud runners for GitHub Actions and GitLab CI. Free plan is EUR 0/month: 1 integration with a GitLab or GitHub organisation, 10 concurrent jobs, 12 vCPU and 32 GB of memory per job, 400 vCPU-minutes and 800 GB-minutes included monthly, usage-priced above that. GitHub runners work with organisation accounts only.The page we cite for this offer does not name it when we last looked, on 2026-11-10, so we cannot confirm these terms today.
There is no free tier: squash.io no longer serves the product. Checked 2026-09-28, the page reads "Squash is no longer operational" and says Squash Labs has shut down the Squash service. The former offer was a preview environment for each branch, with a $40 free credit.
GitHub Actions dominates with unlimited public repo minutes and the largest marketplace of reusable actions. CircleCI offers the most free credits among hosted platforms. Google Cloud Build has the most generous hosted minutes (2,500/mo). Drone CI and Woodpecker CI are unlimited when self-hosted. Catalogue dates April to November 2026.
Which Free CI/CD Tool Should I Use?
Building on GitHub with public repos?
GitHub Actions — unlimited free minutes for public repos, 4,000+ marketplace actions, native GitHub integration. The obvious default choice.
Need more minutes for private repos?
CircleCI (30K credits/mo, ~6K minutes) or Google Cloud Build (2,500 min/mo) both exceed GitHub Actions' 2,000 min/mo private repo limit.
Want an all-in-one DevOps platform?
GitLab CI — SCM, CI/CD, container registry, deployments, and security scanning in one platform. Only 400 min/mo free, but everything is integrated.
Running container/Kubernetes workloads?
Codefresh for managed GitOps with Argo CD. Drone CI or Woodpecker CI for self-hosted, Docker-native pipelines with unlimited builds.
Building mobile apps (iOS/Android/Flutter)?
Codemagic (500 macOS M2 min/mo) is the Flutter favorite. Bitrise covers iOS + Android with built-in code signing. Appcircle adds OTA distribution.
Need unlimited builds, self-hosted?
Drone CI (Apache 2.0) or Woodpecker CI (community fork) — both are container-native, lightweight, and free with no build limits. Semaphore CI also has a free self-hosted edition.
Managing Infrastructure as Code?
Terramate and Stategraph specialize in Terraform/OpenTofu CI/CD with PR-driven workflows. Nx Cloud accelerates monorepo builds with remote caching.
Windows-only builds?
AppVeyor specializes in Windows CI/CD, free for open-source projects. GitHub Actions also supports Windows runners.
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