CircleCI
Hosted CI/CD pipelines. Mature, fast, configurable via YAML. The non-GitHub-Actions choice for teams that need deeper customisation. 6,000 build minutes/mo free.
What is CircleCI?
CircleCI is engineering infrastructure — tooling that helps developers ship, host, monitor, or scale software.
Hosted CI/CD pipelines. Mature, fast, configurable via YAML. The non-GitHub-Actions choice for teams that need deeper customisation. 6,000 build minutes/mo free.
What to look for in engineering
The questions you should ask before committing to CircleCI or any alternative.
- Time-to-deploy from zero
- Build performance and cold-start latency
- Pricing predictability — does it scale gracefully or spike on traffic?
- Vendor lock-in vs self-host options
- Status page reliability and incident track record
- SDK / framework quality
CircleCI cost at scale
Modelled monthly cost as you grow. Estimates only — final pricing varies on plan discounts, volume tiers, and any negotiated enterprise SKU. Team / traffic scale is the axis we vary.
Forex assumed at ₹85/USD. Actual cost includes 2–3.5% forex markup unless paying with a low-fx card.
CircleCI is great for
Web teams shipping production apps, especially Jamstack / serverless / modern-stack workloads.
Probably not ideal if
Heavily-regulated workloads requiring on-prem, or one-off static sites that a $5/mo host would handle.
Alternatives to CircleCI
Other tools in the engineering category we cover.
Postman
API platform for designing, testing, documenting, and monitoring APIs. The default for backend teams.
Sentry
Application error monitoring + performance tracing. Catches exceptions in production with full stack traces.
Cloudflare
CDN, DDoS protection, DNS, edge workers, and zero-trust security. Free tier covers most small sites.
DigitalOcean
Predictable-pricing cloud compute. Droplets from $4/mo, App Platform for managed deploys, managed Postgres + Redis.
Jira
Enterprise issue tracking from Atlassian.
Vercel
Hosting platform optimized for Next.js with edge functions.
CircleCI head-to-head
See all CircleCI alternatives →Side-by-side comparisons with the obvious alternatives.
Track CircleCI in your stack
Add CircleCI to your free MatchYourSaaS tracker — we email you 30/7/1 days before every renewal, with the cheaper alternative ready to compare.
Add to trackerFAQ
›What does CircleCI cost?
Pricing varies by tier and volume. CircleCI publishes the latest rates on their website.
›Who is CircleCI a good fit for?
Web teams shipping production apps, especially Jamstack / serverless / modern-stack workloads.
›Who should NOT use CircleCI?
Heavily-regulated workloads requiring on-prem, or one-off static sites that a $5/mo host would handle.
›Are there cheaper alternatives to CircleCI?
Yes — popular engineering alternatives include Postman, Sentry, Cloudflare. Compare them side-by-side via the head-to-head comparisons we maintain.
Pay for CircleCI with the right card
Picking CircleCI is half the decision. The other half is the card you swipe — at $50/mo the right pick recovers 1.5–4% in forex savings + rewards compared to a default retail card.
EXPRESS
Amex Hilton Honors
No-fx US card — pay USD with USD, zero markup; 3% rewards on engineering spend
IDFC FIRST Wow
0% forex markup vs 3.5% on retail Indian cards
ICICI MMT Signature
1.5% rewards on engineering spend