About CICDCost.com
An independent reference for what CI/CD platforms actually cost in May 2026. Cross-platform comparison, per-vendor deep-dives, self-hosted vs cloud break-even, build-minute mechanics, and team-size cost curves. No vendor relationships, no affiliate links, no quote forms.
Why this site exists
CI/CD vendor pricing pages are scattered, use different units (minutes, credits, agents, build hours), and sit inside marketing funnels that lead with sales contact forms before per-minute numbers. The CircleCI credit model alone takes three pages of vendor docs to translate into a per-minute rate. The Buildkite orchestration-only model needs careful read-through to separate orchestration fees from compute, which is your own infrastructure. GitHub Actions has separate pricing for Linux, Windows, and macOS, plus a different model for self-hosted runners.
This site reduces those vendor pages to a single, comparable per-minute figure plus a free-tier number, and shows the math at common team sizes. The audit goal is reproducibility: every number on the site should be re-derivable from the vendor's own public pricing page.
Cross-vendor break-even math is the other gap. Self-hosted runners on AWS EC2 versus GitHub-hosted minutes is a five-minute spreadsheet exercise; this site does that exercise for you and shows the formula so you can re-run it against your own assumptions.
Who builds this
CICDCost.com is built and maintained by Oliver Wakefield-Smith at Digital Signet, an independent reference-content studio. The site is part of a portfolio of cost-reference properties that includes platformengineeringcost.com, monitoringcost.com, and egresscost.com.
For deeper scenario modelling, use the sister site cicdcalculator.com, which lets you input your team size, build minutes, OS mix, and parallelism to see modelled monthly cost across every platform on this site.
Editorial position
This is a reference site, not a reseller, not a managed-services lead-generation property, and not a consultancy funnel. Pricing pages link directly to each vendor's own pricing page without affiliate or UTM tracking. Comparison tables order platforms by their published rate or free tier, not by any commercial relationship.
Where a number is contested between sources (e.g., the Jenkins-maintenance-hours estimate, or the CircleCI Medium Linux per-minute conversion), both ends of the range are shown with the assumption stated. Where a vendor's pricing page is genuinely unclear or shifts during a verification cycle, the site flags the uncertainty rather than pick a single point estimate.
What this site covers
Editorial principles
Every per-minute rate, free-tier number, and tier price on this site traces back to a CI/CD vendor's own public pricing page (GitHub, CircleCI, GitLab, Buildkite, AWS, Atlassian, Harness). Where a vendor uses a credit model the conversion is shown alongside the published rate.
There are no sponsored slots, no premium positioning, no pay-to-rank. Platform order in tables is determined by free-tier and per-minute rate, not by any commercial relationship.
Outbound links to vendor pricing pages (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, GitLab, Buildkite, AWS CodeBuild, Bitbucket Pipelines, Drone CI/Harness) are plain unaffiliated URLs. This site is a reference, not a lead-generation funnel.
Pricing is re-verified against each vendor's own pricing page on the first business week of each month. The last verified label currently reads May 2026.
The verification date is held in one constant (LAST_VERIFIED_DATE) imported by every page. Footer text, schema dateModified, and visible headings all read from that single source so cosmetic refreshes are not possible.
Self-hosted vs cloud break-even uses a published cloud per-minute rate, a published cloud instance rate (AWS EC2 on-demand), and excludes hidden costs that are hard to attribute (artifact storage drift, egress, engineering maintenance time). The formula is shown on every page that uses it.
Methodology in brief
Per-minute rates come from vendor public pricing pages. Credit models (CircleCI) are translated to a per-minute rate at the default machine type with the conversion shown. Self-hosted break-even math uses the published cloud rate, an AWS EC2 on-demand instance rate, and a formula that anyone can re-run with their own numbers. Jenkins maintenance hours are a published range, not a point estimate; both ends of the range are shown.
For full source provenance, calculation framework, in-scope / out-of-scope coverage, and the corrections process, see the methodology page.
Contact and corrections
Spotted a stale price, a missing tier, or a vendor change we have not caught yet? Email [email protected] with the page URL and the source you would like cited. Substantive corrections are typically actioned within five business days.
Disclosures
- ●No affiliate links or referral fees on any vendor URL on this site.
- ●No email-gated downloads, quote forms, or sales redirects.
- ●Not affiliated with GitHub, GitLab, CircleCI, Buildkite, Atlassian, Amazon Web Services, Harness, or any other listed CI/CD vendor.
- ●Calculator and break-even outputs are estimates; production pricing depends on enterprise agreements, regional surcharges, and reserved-capacity commitments not covered here.