Compare free CI/CD alternatives: GitLab CI, CircleCI, Buildkite, Harness, Drone CI, Google Cloud Build, and more. Catalogue dates July to November 2026.
GitHub announced a $0.002/min charge for self-hosted runners in private repos from March 1, 2026, then postponed it, so self-hosted runners are still free. The GitHub-hosted free tier (2,000 minutes a month for private repos; standard runners are free in public repos) is unchanged.
For public repositories, GitHub Actions remains the best free CI/CD option — unlimited minutes with no restrictions. But if you’re running private repo pipelines on self-hosted infrastructure, these alternatives offer generous free tiers.
Below are the best free CI/CD alternatives, compared by exact free tier limits — build minutes, concurrent jobs, storage, and platform support. For the full picture, see our definitive CI/CD pricing comparison covering 17+ tools across general, cloud-native, mobile, and self-hosted categories.
Pricing Postponed
On 2025-12-17 GitHub postponed the $0.002-a-minute charge for self-hosted Actions runners that it had announced the day before for 2026-03-01, to re-evaluate its approach. Self-hosted runners remain free. The price cut of up to 39% for GitHub-hosted runners went ahead on 2026-01-01 as announced. Source ↗
Before: Announced 2025-12-16: from 2026-03-01, self-hosted runner usage would pay a $0.002-a-minute Actions cloud platform charge After: Self-hosted runners remain free; the charge is postponed while GitHub re-evaluates. GitHub-hosted runner prices fell by up to 39% on 2026-01-01
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Free OSS (MIT). Self-hosted automation server — a self-contained Java program that runs out of the box on your own machine, with no hosted or paid plan offered by the project. Over 2,300 plugins; the leading open source automation server. jenkins.io/license/ carries the MIT License, which grants use free of charge. Read 2026-10-21.
Drone CI, Woodpecker CI, and Semaphore Community Edition are self-hosted only — limits depend on your infrastructure. GitLab CI’s 400 min/mo applies to shared runners on gitlab.com; self-hosted GitLab runners are free. Bitbucket Pipelines (50 min/mo) not shown due to limited free tier.
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