CI/CD Pricing 2026
Independent deep cost guides for every major CI/CD platform. Pricing math, hidden taxes (flaky tests, wait time, egress), and self-hosted break-even analysis. Every number sourced and dated.
2026 GitHub Actions Pricing Changes
January 2026: Linux dropped to $0.006/min (-25%), Windows to $0.010/min (-38%), macOS to $0.062/min (-23%). The $0.002/min self-hosted platform fee announced for March 2026 was postponed after backlash and never took effect. Read the full brief →
At-a-glance: 7 platforms
Per-minute Linux rates and self-hosted availability. Click any platform for the full pricing breakdown.
| Platform | Linux / min | macOS / min | Self-hosted | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Actions | $0.006 | $0.062 | Yes (free) | GitHub users, OSS projects |
| GitLab CI | $0.010 | $0.010 | Yes (free) | No OS multipliers, self-managed |
| CircleCI 30,000 free credits/month | $0.006 | $0.12+ | Yes | Predictable compute needs |
| Buildkite | Self-hosted free | Self-hosted free | Yes (core model) | Large teams, custom infra |
| AWS CodeBuild | $0.005 | N/A | N/A | AWS-native deployments |
| Bitbucket Pipelines | $0.010 | N/A | Limited | Atlassian/Jira teams |
| Drone CI | Infra cost only | Infra cost only | Yes (required) | Open-source, budget teams |
Monthly Cost Estimator
Enter your build profile to see estimated monthly costs across all platforms.
Estimates only. Excludes storage, egress, and enterprise features. Prices verified June 2026. Get precise calculations at cicdcalculator.com
What does YOUR build cost on every major CI/CD platform?
Set your build minutes, parallelism, users and compute class. We run the same workload through GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Buildkite, GitLab CI, AWS CodeBuild, Bitbucket, Jenkins (self-hosted) and Bitrise — using each vendor's published pricing.
Pricing sources + assumptions ↓
- GitHub Actions: https://github.com/pricing (May 2026). Hidden costs: Larger runners (4x-64x core) cost 2-16x more per minute. Windows 2x, macOS 10x.
- CircleCI: https://circleci.com/pricing/ (May 2026). Hidden costs: Resource classes scale credits 10-100x. macOS adds 50%. Docker layer cache extra.
- Buildkite: https://buildkite.com/pricing (May 2026). Hidden costs: Buildkite's hosted agent fleet adds $0.10-$0.25/min on top of the user fee.
- GitLab CI (SaaS Premium): https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ (May 2026). Hidden costs: Ultra tier ($99/user) for compliance/SBOM. Saturn/medium runners 2-4x credits.
- AWS CodeBuild: https://aws.amazon.com/codebuild/pricing/ (May 2026). Hidden costs: Reserved capacity 30% discount. Lambda runners $0.005/min. Custom AMIs free.
- Bitbucket Pipelines: https://www.atlassian.com/software/bitbucket/pricing (May 2026). Hidden costs: 2x and 4x size steps multiply minute cost. Premium tier ($6/user) doubles free minutes.
- Jenkins (self-hosted): https://www.jenkins.io (TCO estimate, May 2026). Hidden costs: Plugin maintenance, controller upgrades, secrets handling — the 'free' is opex.
- Bitrise (mobile CI): https://bitrise.io/pricing (May 2026). Hidden costs: iOS Mac M2 minutes cost ~3x Linux. Velocity (premium) plan adds $300/mo base.
- Semaphore: https://semaphore.io/pricing (June 2026). Hidden costs: Larger machines (4vCPU $0.015/min, 8vCPU $0.012 ARM) scale up. MacOS 4vCPU $0.09/min. Self-hosted agents at $0.0025/min available.
All figures assume Linux x64 standard runners unless stated. Excludes egress, artifact storage, cache, and SSO add-ons (priced separately on most platforms). For Buildkite and Jenkins the "monthly" figure includes estimated self-managed agent infrastructure cost.
Which CI/CD platform actually fits your team?
Different pricing models suit different team shapes. Pick your stage, your workload, your binding constraint — we'll recommend the platform whose pricing model is built for your situation, plus name the trap.
What is your test suite's flakiness costing you?
Most CI bills hide flake cost in "rerun" minutes and developer context-switching. We unbundle it into compute tax + developer-time tax + morale tax — then project the ROI of a flake-reduction sprint.
How we model flake cost ↓
- Industry flake-rate baseline: Google's SRE practice reports 1.5% test flake at scale; Dropbox and GitHub Engineering have published 5-15%. Default 8% is the median teams report.
- Compute cost: flaky_builds × reruns × build_minutes × per-minute rate. Most teams underestimate reruns because retries are auto-triggered.
- Developer interruption: Microsoft Research and Atlassian time-tracking studies put context-switch cost at 10-23 minutes per disruption. We use 15 minutes as midpoint and assume 50% of flakes interrupt a developer.
- Morale heuristic: internal surveys (Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024, JetBrains State of Developer Ecosystem 2025) report flaky tests as a top-5 cause of dev frustration. The 0.5% per 10pp flake-rate figure is a rough placeholder for attrition/recruiting cost — replace with your real number if known.
- 80% reduction: typical outcome of a focused 6-12 week sprint with quarantining + retry budgets + flake-aware retry policies. Reference: Thoughtworks, Buildkite blog.
Platform Deep Dives
GitHub Actions
CircleCI
GitLab CI
Buildkite
AWS CodeBuild
Bitbucket Pipelines
Drone CI
Jenkins
Key Findings for 2026
January 2026 brought a welcome price cut: Linux down 25%, Windows down 38%, macOS down 23%. The $0.002/min platform fee for self-hosted runners, announced in December 2025 for a March 2026 start, was postponed within 48 hours after community backlash and never took effect.
Full GitHub Actions pricing analysisCircleCI charges per credit, not per minute. 1 credit = $0.0006. A Medium Linux machine (the default) uses 10 credits/min = $0.006/min, identical to GitHub Actions Linux. The credit model adds confusion but the maths is the same at the default tier.
CircleCI credits explainedWith no platform fee and the cheaper January 2026 hosted rates, a t3.medium self-hosted runner ($30/mo) breaks even at approximately 5,000 minutes/month on GitHub Actions or GitLab self-managed CE alike. At 2025 rates it was 3,750 minutes: cheaper hosted minutes push the break-even up.
Full break-even analysisCost Guides
Cost components: line by line
What each line on a CI/CD invoice actually represents, with vendor citations on every per-component page.
Hidden costs vendors do not bill
The CI/CD line items that show up in your engineering payroll, not your CI invoice.
By team stage and pipeline shape
Cost-reduction strategies
Frequently Asked Questions
Which CI/CD platform is cheapest overall?
For public repos, GitHub Actions is cheapest with unlimited free minutes. For private repos under 2,000 minutes/month, GitHub Actions Free tier costs nothing. At 2,000-10,000 minutes, compare GitHub Actions Team ($4/user/month) with CircleCI Performance ($15/month flat). Beyond 20,000 minutes/month, self-hosted runners on cheap VPS (Hetzner from $5/month) typically cost less than any hosted option. See our cheapest CI by team size guide for a full breakdown.
How much does GitHub Actions cost per month?
After the January 2026 price reduction: Linux $0.006/min, Windows $0.010/min, macOS $0.062/min. Free tier: 2,000 minutes/month (Team plan: 3,000). A 5-person team on the Team plan using 15,000 minutes/month (90% Linux, 10% Windows) pays approximately $77/month. Self-hosted runners remain free of platform fees. See our GitHub Actions pricing guide.
Is Jenkins really free?
Jenkins software is free and open-source. But running Jenkins in production costs real money. A minimal setup with 1 build agent on AWS: ~$45/month in compute. A standard 3-agent setup: ~$210/month. Add engineering maintenance time (5-10 hours/month at $75/hour): $375-750/month in staff cost. Jenkins makes financial sense for teams doing 50,000+ build minutes/month where cloud CI would exceed $300/month. Read our full Jenkins cost breakdown.
What changed in GitHub Actions pricing in 2026?
One change happened and one was reversed. January 1, 2026: GitHub reduced hosted runner rates by up to 39%: Linux from $0.008 to $0.006/min (-25%), Windows from $0.016 to $0.010/min (-38%), macOS from $0.080 to $0.062/min (-23%). A $0.002/min platform charge for self-hosted runners on private repos, announced December 16, 2025 for a March 1, 2026 start, was postponed within 48 hours after community backlash and never took effect. Self-hosted runner usage remains free.
What are the hidden costs of CI/CD?
Beyond the per-minute rate: (1) Artifact storage overages - GitHub Actions charges $0.008/GB/day beyond free tier. (2) macOS runner costs - at $0.062/min, a 15-minute iOS build costs $0.93; heavy iOS CI costs thousands per month. (3) Concurrent job limits forcing tier upgrades. (4) Data egress from pulling large Docker images. (5) SSO and enterprise security features requiring expensive tier upgrades. See our full guide on CI/CD hidden costs.
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