Compare CircleCI and GitHub Actions free tiers side by side. GitHub Actions is free and unlimited for public repos, making it unbeatable for open source.
Side-by-side comparison of free tiers, pricing changes, and stability. Catalogue dates here run to 2026-08-20.
Quick Verdict: GitHub Actions is free and unlimited for public repos, making it unbeatable for open source. CircleCI offers 30K credits/month with powerful caching and parallelism. For private repos with complex build pipelines, CircleCI's execution model can be more efficient.
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).
Free CI/CD for public repos (unlimited minutes). Private repos: 2,000 min/mo GitHub-hosted runners, 500 MB artifact storage, 10 GB cache/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)
Key Differences
Free tier model: GitHub Actions gives unlimited minutes for public repos and 2K min/month for private repos. CircleCI gives 30K credits/month (~6K build minutes on small Docker) regardless of repo visibility.
Integration: GitHub Actions is native to GitHub — no additional service to set up, manage, or authenticate. CircleCI requires connecting your repo to an external service.
Caching & parallelism: CircleCI has more sophisticated caching, test splitting, and parallelism features. GitHub Actions caching works but is simpler.
Marketplace: GitHub Actions has a massive marketplace of community actions. CircleCI has Orbs, which are well-maintained but fewer in number.
Pricing Change History
CircleCI
increaseddiscovered 2026-09-03 · effective date unknownmedium impact
CircleCI's plan table began listing the (x86) Docker (Gen 2) Small, Medium, Medium+ and Large resource classes as available on the Free plan, between the Internet Archive's captures of 2026-08-29 and 2026-09-01. The Free plan's 30,000 credits a month, up to 5 active users and 30x concurrency did not change. Source ↗
GitHub Actions
postponedeffective 2026-01-01low impact
Self-hosted runner per-minute fee ($0.002/min) announced for March 2026 was postponed indefinitely after community backlash. Self-hosted runners remain free. Separately, hosted runner prices were reduced up to 39% (Jan 2026) Source ↗
Our Recommendation
Choose GitHub Actions if you host code on GitHub, work on open-source projects (unlimited free minutes), or want zero-configuration CI/CD without an external service.
Choose CircleCI if you need advanced build optimization (test splitting, resource classes, Docker layer caching) or your workflows would benefit from CircleCI's credit-based flexibility.
Is CircleCI or GitHub Actions better for free tier?
GitHub Actions is free and unlimited for public repos, making it unbeatable for open source. CircleCI offers 30K credits/month with powerful caching and parallelism. For private repos with complex build pipelines, CircleCI's execution model can be more efficient.
What is CircleCI's free tier?
CircleCI offers a Free plan: 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...
Choose GitHub Actions if you host code on GitHub, work on open-source projects (unlimited free minutes), or want zero-configuration CI/CD without an external service. Choose CircleCI if you need advanced build optimization (test splitting, resource classes, Docker layer caching) or your workflows would benefit from CircleCI's credit-based flexibility.