CircleCI Pricing 2026: Credits, Free Plan and Performance

CircleCI costs $0 on the Free plan, which includes 30,000 credits a month and up to 5 active users, and from $15 a month on Performance, where each extra block of 25,000 credits costs $15. Scale is custom and billed annually. Credits pay for everything: a Docker Medium build uses 10 credits a minute, and each user beyond five uses 25,000 credits a month. Prices read on CircleCI's pricing page on 19 October 2026.

Every figure here comes from CircleCI's pricing page and its credit price list, last updated by CircleCI on 8 October 2026 and read on 19 October 2026. The short version for engineering leads: CircleCI is cheap when your team is small and your jobs run on small Linux or Docker machines, and it gets expensive fast on macOS, Windows and large resource classes, because those burn credits 2 to 20 times faster than a Docker Medium job.

Toolradar data: the CI/CD ranking on Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 115 CI/CD tools as of 19 October 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan among the 27 that publish a price is $20 a month. CircleCI's entry price sits under that median, and CircleCI's Toolradar record shows it listed as an alternative to 31 other tools.

CircleCI plans at a glance

The free allowance is worth a fixed amount on every plan. Our arithmetic: at the Performance block price, one credit costs $0.0006, so the 30,000 free credits are worth $18 a month, and a Docker Medium minute at 10 credits costs $0.006.

How do CircleCI credits work?

Credits are CircleCI's currency, bought up front and spent in real time. They pay for three things: compute minutes at a per-minute rate set by the machine you pick, monthly active users, and add-on features such as Docker layer caching. Network and storage above the plan's allowance also come out of the same pool, at 420 credits per GB, which CircleCI prices at $0.252 per GB.

An active user is anyone who commits code to a project that builds on CircleCI in the month. That definition matters for teams with occasional contributors: a designer who pushes one fix counts the same as a full-time engineer.

The rollover rules decide how much you waste. Free credits on both plans expire at the end of each month. Paid credits on Performance roll over month to month and expire after a year, and any unused credits are forfeited if you cancel. So buying slightly more than you need costs little, while leaning on the free 30,000 for a burst month and then buying nothing loses them.

What does each machine cost per minute?

CircleCI's price list sets a credit rate per resource class. The table converts the main ones to dollars at the Performance rate of $0.0006 a credit, our arithmetic.

Two details change how you should configure jobs. The Gen 2 Arm Docker classes, still in beta, cost less per minute than the older x86 Docker Medium with twice the RAM, so moving a Linux-compatible job to Arm cuts its compute bill by 40%. And macOS is the expensive line: the free allowance covers only 150 minutes of M4 Pro Medium, so an iOS team will pay from the first week.

Plan limits also matter, because the machine you want may not be on your plan. Free and Performance stop below CircleCI's largest classes: X-large is a Performance feature, 2 X-large needs Scale, and GPUs are Scale only.

What does a real team pay on CircleCI?

Devshot data: we built this table on 19 October 2026 from CircleCI's published credit rates. Users beyond five are counted at 25,000 credits each, compute at the class rate times minutes, and the result is rounded up to whole 25,000-credit blocks, because that is how Performance sells credits. Any leftover credits from a rounded block roll over. Docker layer caching, storage overage and taxes are excluded.

The jump in the last row is all macOS. One thousand minutes on an M4 Pro Medium cost more credits than ten thousand Docker Medium minutes, so a mobile team should price its macOS minutes first and everything else second. The same 8-person team moving its Linux jobs to Docker Large would double that compute line, since Large uses twice the credits of Medium.

Free covers the first row because three developers fit under the 5-user cap and 25,000 credits fit under 30,000. The second row is the usual trigger for upgrading: the team has not grown, but its builds have outgrown the free credits.

Performance billing options and bulk credits

Performance has two ways to pay. The default monthly option charges at the start of each billing month for a set amount bought in 25,000-credit blocks. When you run out, CircleCI refills automatically by 25% of your monthly amount, with a minimum of 25,000 credits. A team buying 200,000 credits a month gets a 50,000-credit refill when it runs dry.

The Prepaid Billing option sells credits in bulk, starting at 1 million credits for $600, with discounts starting at 5 million credits for $3,000. All paid credits are valid for 12 months from purchase whichever option you pick, so prepaying only makes sense if you will burn the volume inside a year.

Hidden costs worth budgeting

• Docker layer caching costs 200 credits per job run (Docker's own plans are covered in Docker pricing), which CircleCI prices at $0.12. A workflow with three parallel Docker build jobs pays that three times per run, on top of compute.
• IP ranges, available from Performance, cost 450 credits per GB of data used by jobs with the feature on.
• Network and storage beyond the allowance cost 420 credits per GB. Free and Performance include 2 GB of storage, with 1 GB of network on Free and 5 GB on Performance; Scale includes 50 GB and 200 GB.
• Smarter Testing features such as intelligent test selection and dynamic test splitting are free up to 1,000 test atoms a month on Free and 10,000 on Performance, then 3,000 credits per 100,000 test atoms.
• Support SLAs are an add-on: Performance can buy an 8x5 SLA, and only Scale offers 24x7.

Free plan limits

The Free plan includes all of CircleCI's premium features with no credit card, which is a stronger free offer than most CI tools. The limits are the 30,000 monthly credits, which CircleCI equates to up to 6,000 build minutes on a small Docker class, 5 active users, 30 concurrent jobs, one concurrent macOS job, 5 self-hosted runner tasks and flaky test detection for 5 tests.

Open source projects get more: up to 400,000 credits a month on Linux, Arm and Docker, which CircleCI equates to 80,000 build minutes. Open source Windows and macOS builds stay on the standard 30,000 credits.

Self-hosted runners are a way to cut compute cost, and a cheap box from the best cheap VPS list can host one. CircleCI does not charge per build minute on self-hosted runners, but runners can incur network egress at 420 credits per GB beyond the plan allowance, and Free limits you to 5 concurrent runner tasks against 20 on Performance.

How CircleCI compares

Our CI/CD pricing comparison prices CircleCI against GitHub Actions, GitLab CI and Buildkite for the same team and build volume, and shows where seats change the order. For the GitHub side in detail, see GitHub Actions pricing, and for the full field of tools, the best CI/CD tools ranking. Teams on GitLab can check the GitLab review for how its compute minutes compare, and GitHub vs GitLab for the repository side. Startups assembling a whole stack can start from the best dev tools for startups, and the cloud free tiers comparison covers free hosting for what your pipelines deploy.

Pick CircleCI if your team is small, your jobs run on Docker or Linux, and you want the most generous free tier with every feature switched on. Look elsewhere if most of your minutes are macOS or Windows, or if your team is well past five contributors and your CI already lives next to your repository host.

How we checked

Plan prices, allowances, concurrency limits and billing rules come from CircleCI's pricing page, and per-minute credit rates and add-on costs from its price list, both read on 19 October 2026 in US dollars. Dollar figures per minute and per scenario are our arithmetic at the Performance block price. The Toolradar figures come from its CI/CD ranking. CircleCI updates its price list from time to time, so recheck the class rates you rely on before budgeting.

Cite this: Devshot, "CircleCI Pricing 2026: Credits, Free Plan and Performance", November 2026.

The daily Devshot brief tracks CI and developer tool price changes so they do not arrive as a surprise on the invoice. Subscribe at devshot.co.

FAQ

How much does CircleCI cost in 2026?

CircleCI's Free plan costs $0 and includes 30,000 credits a month for up to 5 active users. Performance starts at $15 a month, with each additional 25,000-credit block at that same price, and Scale is custom and billed annually. What you actually pay depends on minutes, machine size and active users, all paid in credits.

Is CircleCI free?

Yes. The Free plan includes 30,000 credits a month, up to 5 active users, all premium features and 30 concurrent jobs, with no credit card required. Free credits expire at the end of each month. Open source projects can use up to 400,000 credits a month on Linux, Arm and Docker.

How many build minutes do 30,000 CircleCI credits give?

It depends on the machine. At 10 credits a minute on Docker Medium or Linux VM Medium, 30,000 credits give 3,000 minutes, and on Docker Small at 5 credits they give 6,000. On macOS M4 Pro Medium at 200 credits a minute, the same credits last 150 minutes.

How much does an extra CircleCI user cost?

On Performance, the first 5 active users are included and each additional user costs 25,000 credits a month, the same as one paid credit block. On Scale, each user costs 40,000 credits a month. An active user is anyone who commits code to a project building on CircleCI that month.

Do CircleCI credits roll over?

Paid credits on Performance roll over month to month and expire after a year. The 30,000 free credits on Free and Performance expire at the end of each month and do not roll over, and unused paid credits are forfeited if you cancel.

Is CircleCI cheaper than GitHub Actions?

It depends on team size and machine mix. CircleCI includes 5 active users on Performance, which favors small teams, while each user beyond five adds 25,000 credits a month. Our CI/CD pricing comparison works through where the order flips.

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