Buildkite

buildkite.com · 4 records in CI runners, Compute, Storage · JSON

Records 4

caveatBuildkite Free
CI runnersfree tieridentity emailno cardlimit volume-quotaevidence documentedstale on 2026-12-04
caveatBuildkite
Computefree tieridentity emailno cardlimit volume-quotaevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-30duplicate
caveatBuildkite hosted agents
Computefree tieridentity emailno cardlimit request-rateevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-30duplicate
fails: quotabuildkite artifacts
Storageidentity email?card?evidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05

Buildkite Free

CI runners

buildkite.com/pricingCI runnerci-cd-runners/buildkite-freeJSON compare report an error

Free allowance: 5 users, 10 concurrent jobs and 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month, plus 250,000 test executions a month
Verdict: caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
Cost: free tier
Identity: emailno card, no phone
Binding limit: volume-quotaUp to 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month of Buildkite-hosted agents on the Free plan (Pro includes 4,000); usage is the shape's vCPU count times job runtime
Evidence: documented19 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-12-04checked 2026-11-03 (live); stale on 2026-12-04

Free tier	5 users, 10 concurrent jobs and 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month, plus 250,000 test executions a month unit minutes; metered on wall-clock
Price	USD 0.004 per vCPU-minute
Limits	volume-quota (binding) Up to 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month of Buildkite-hosted agents on the Free plan (Pro includes 4,000); usage is the shape's vCPU count times job runtime source request-rate 5 users on Free source request-rate Linux hosted-agent concurrency of 20 vCPU on the Free plan, which is 10 small machines at 2 vCPU each; further jobs queue until capacity frees source retention-clamped Job timeout of 4 hours on the Free plan; unlimited on Pro and Enterprise source
Binding	volume-quota the monthly pool runs out first: 2,000 vCPU-minutes on the only shape the Free plan offers, 2 vCPU, is 1,000 wall-clock minutes a month, against a 4-hour job timeout; usage counts job runtime, with startup and shutdown excluded
Identity	email the signup form asks for a full name, an email and a password, or a GitHub sign-in; the Free plan states 'No credit card required'; the form has no phone or card field
Egress	artifact downloads: 250 GB a month on the Free plan, 2.5 TB a month on Pro and then USD 0.10 per GB; no charge for network traffic from a hosted agent is published on the pricing, limits or hosted-agent pages free allowance: 250 GB a month of artifact downloads price per tb: USD 100 per TB of artifact downloads beyond the Pro allowance; the Free plan names no overage
Per-object cap	10 GiB per artifact uploaded from an agent, and 50 GiB of artifacts in one job's upload batch (10737418240 bytes)
Retention	builds are stored 30 days on the Free plan (90 on Pro, 365 on Enterprise) and artifacts 30 days; the vCPU-minute pool is monthly (30 days)
Interface	git, cli an agent you run, with Buildkite as the control plane; the bk CLI and a REST API
Tooling	Buildkite-hosted Linux agents on the Free plan, small shape only, run the jobs with no machine of the user's; their outbound traffic comes from IP address ranges shared across customers, and dedicated static addresses are requested from Support; the buildkite-agent binary can also run on a VM from another provider and take jobs from the same pipelines
Composes with	the Free plan supplies both the scheduler and a hosted machine; once the monthly vCPU-minute pool is spent, the same pipelines can dispatch to a buildkite-agent on a free or rented VM from another provider, which counts against the 10 concurrent self-hosted jobs rather than the pool
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	2,000 vCPU-minutes is 33 vCPU-hours. The Free plan reaches only the 2 vCPU small shape, so the pool is 1,000 wall-clock minutes (16 h 40 min) a month, and a larger shape needs a paid plan. A self-run agent does not draw on the pool, but it needs a machine from another provider, so it is the last resort.
Evidence note	documented the pricing page was read and lists the Free column explicitly.
Parsed numbers	has-free-tier 1 retention-clamped 4 hours price USD 0.004 vCPU-minute

Evidence 19

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	buildkite.com/pricing	the Free column: 'Up to 2,000 Linux vCPU minutes per month', 'Up to 250k test executions per month', 10 concurrent agents with 10 included, 5 users; Pro includes 4,000 Linux vCPU minutes
2026-10-22	buildkite.com/pricing	Free: up to 5 users, up to 10 concurrent jobs, up to 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month; hosted agents at USD 0.004 per vCPU-minute, metered to the second with no minimum
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/linux	the Free plan includes Buildkite-hosted Linux agents, restricted to the small instance shapes
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	the hosted-agent limits table: Linux vCPU minutes per month are up to 2,000 on Free, 4,000 included on Pro
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	the Free plan's hosted concurrency is 20 vCPU, which is 10 small machines at 2 vCPU each
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	a job on the Free plan times out after 4 hours
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	the monthly vCPU-minute pool of the Free plan is up to 2,000
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/hosted-agents	hosted-agent usage counts job runtime; startup and shutdown are not billed and there is no minimum
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	builds are stored 30 days on the Free plan; the same table gives artifact retention of 30 days on Free
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	build retention is 30 days on the Free plan
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	an artifact uploaded from an agent is at most 10 GiB; the same table gives 50 GiB per job batch
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	the artifact file size cap is 10 GiB
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/pricing/feature-comparison	artifact downloads are 250 GB a month on Free and 2.5 TB a month on Pro, then USD 0.10 per GB
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/signup	the signup form has full name, email and password fields and a GitHub sign-in, and no phone or card field
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/pricing	an agent runs either on Buildkite-hosted compute or on infrastructure the user supplies
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/linux	the Free plan cannot select a shape larger than small, which is 2 vCPU
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/pricing	the Free plan is USD 0 with up to 5 users, 10 concurrent jobs, 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes and 250k test executions a month, and needs no card
2026-11-02	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/network-security	hosted agents reach the network from IP address ranges shared across customers
2026-11-02	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/network-security	dedicated static egress addresses for hosted agents are not self-serve; they are requested from Support

Unknown values 1

reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed

Buildkite

Compute

buildkite.com/pricingCI runnercompute/buildkiteJSON compare report an error

Free allowance: Quoted from the Free plan: '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', and 'No credit card required'.
Verdict: caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
Cost: free tier
Identity: emailno card, no phone
Binding limit: volume-quotaUp to 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month on the Free plan. At the 2 vCPU small shape that is 1,000 wall-clock minutes; there is no larger shape on this plan.
Evidence: documented11 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-30checked 2026-10-30 (live); stale on 2026-11-30

Free tier	Quoted from the Free plan: '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', and 'No credit card required'. The hosted-agent limits table makes the machine explicit: 'Linux vCPU minutes per month \| ... \| Free \| Up to 2,000' and 'Linux vCPU concurrency \| ... \| 20 vCPU'. Quoted from the Linux hosted-agent page: 'The Free plan only provides access to small-sized instance shapes.' The small shape is `LINUX_AMD64_2X4`, quoted as 'Small \| AMD64 \| 2 \| 4 GB \| 47 GB'. unit minutes; metered on wall-clock; The unit is a vCPU-minute, not a wall-clock minute. At the only shape the Free plan offers, 2 vCPU, 2,000 vCPU-minutes is 1,000 wall-clock minutes, or 16 h 40 min a month.
Price	none stated
Limits	volume-quota (binding) Up to 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month on the Free plan. At the 2 vCPU small shape that is 1,000 wall-clock minutes; there is no larger shape on this plan. source request-rate Linux vCPU concurrency on the Free plan is 20 vCPU. Quoted worked example: 'the Free plan's 20-vCPU Linux limit supports up to 10 Small Linux machines at 2 vCPU each'. source retention-clamped 'Job timeout \| The maximum time before a running job will time out. Default: 4 hours on the Free plan. Unlimited on Pro and Enterprise plans.' Separately, hosted Linux instances are 'capable of running up to 8 hours'. source write-gated No inbound reachability published and the environment is destroyed at job end; no static IP is offered on the Free plan source per-object-cap The Free plan reaches only the small shape, so the machine is 2 vCPU and 4 GB with no way to buy a bigger one without a paid plan source The 2,000 vCPU-minute pool is the ceiling: 1,000 wall-clock minutes a month on the only shape the Free plan allows, which is 33 minutes a day. The 4-hour job timeout does not bind before it.
Binding	volume-quota 2,000 vCPU-minutes is 1,000 wall-clock minutes on the only shape the Free plan offers, which is 33 minutes a day: the month runs out long before the 4-hour job timeout does.
Identity	email Quoted from the Free plan: 'No credit card required', and from the signup block: 'Start Free or Pro with 30 days of the all-access trial. No credit card or commitment.' No card, no hold and no phone is stated as required anywhere read. The account limits are 'Organizations per day \| Default: 4 organizations' and 'Unverified emails per user \| Default: 5 emails', which implies an email-verified account is the gate.
Egress	not published on any page read: no egress quota, shaping tier or per-byte price is stated for Buildkite hosted agents
Retention	'Once the job is complete, regardless of its exit status, the virtualized environment and all of its associated data, including data it generated during job execution, is removed and destroyed.' Cache volumes are the exception and are persisted across jobs.
Interface	unknown inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	None worth composing.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	So Buildkite does sell a free machine, it is 2 vCPU and 4 GB, and it needs no card. At 2 vCPU the pool is 16 h 40 min a month, not 8 h 20 min. Not established: the egress term; whether a hosted agent can be reached inbound (no page read says it can, and the environment is destroyed at job end); and whether the 2,000 vCPU-minutes includes the boot time of the agent, which the limits page says consumes concurrency 'from the time it starts booting' but does not say whether it consumes minutes.
Evidence note	documented the 2,000 vCPU-minutes, the 20 vCPU concurrency, the 4-hour Free-plan job timeout and 'No credit card required' are quoted from buildkite.com/pricing and buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits read; the 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 47 GB shape and the Free-plan shape restriction are quoted from the Linux hosted-agent page read.
Parsed numbers	has-free-tier 1 retention-clamped 4 hours per-object-cap 4 GB

Evidence 11

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	buildkite.com/pricing	'Free Plan ... 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', and 'No credit card required'; Pro includes '4,000 Linux vCPU minutes per month'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/pricing	quoted, Free plan: 'For solo developers and small teams', '$ 0', 'No credit card required', with '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'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	quoted, hosted agents limits table: '\| Linux vCPU concurrency \| 24 vCPU \| 20 vCPU \| 256 vCPU \| Custom \|' and '\| Linux vCPU minutes per month \| 4,000 included \| Up to 2,000 \| 4,000 included \| Volume discounts \|'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	quoted: 'the Free plan's 20-vCPU Linux limit supports up to 10 Small Linux machines at 2 vCPU each'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	quoted: 'Job timeout \| The maximum time before a running job will time out. Default: 4 hours on the Free plan. Unlimited on Pro and Enterprise plans'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/linux	quoted: 'only provides access to small-sized instance shapes' (the sentence is 'The [Free plan](https://buildkite.com/pricing/) only provides access to small-sized instance shapes.' with the plan name as a link) and the shape table row '\| `LINUX_AMD64_2X4` \| Small \| AMD64 \| 2 \| 4 GB \| 47 GB \|', plus 'To accommodate different workloads, instances are capable of running up to 8 hours.'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/pricing/feature-comparison	quoted, the Hosted Agents block for the Free column: 'Up to 2,000 mins/month', 'Small only', 'Up to 20 vCPU'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/hosted-agents	quoted: 'Once the job is complete, regardless of its exit status, the virtualized environment and all of its associated data, including data it generated during job execution, is removed and destroyed. For Linux and macOS hosted agents, any cache volume data is persisted.'
2026-10-24	buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/hosted-agents	quoted: 'Hosted agents are provisioned on demand and destroyed after each job, providing clean, reproducible builds'
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/hosted-agents	hosted-agent usage counts job runtime only; startup and shutdown are not billed, so boot time does not draw on the 2,000 vCPU-minute pool
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/platform/limits	the Free plan's hosted concurrency is 20 vCPU, 10 small 2 vCPU machines

More fields 17

facets	`{"class": "ci-runner-capacity","free_tier_kind": "monthly-vcpu-minute","shape": {"vcpu": null,"ram_gib": null,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": 0}}`
shape	{"vcpu": 2,"ram_gib": 4,"disk_gib": 47,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": null,"note": "`LINUX_AMD64_2X4`, the only shape the Free plan offers, quoted as 'Small \| AMD64 \| 2 \| 4 GB \| 47 GB'. The vendor writes decimal GB; kept unconverted, so 4 GB is about 3.7 GiB and 47 GB about 43.8 GiB. Larger shapes exist (4/16/95, 8/32/158 and up to 64 vCPU) but are paid-plan or Enterprise only."}
billing model	free
term	none
price arithmetic	2,000 vCPU-minutes / 2 vCPU = 1,000 wall-clock minutes = 16 h 40 min a month at USD 0.00. 10 h a day x 30 = 300 h = 18,000 wall-clock minutes = 36,000 vCPU-minutes, eighteen times the pool. 24/7 x 30 = 730 h needs 87,600 vCPU-minutes, forty-four times the pool. Past the pool the rate is USD 0.004 per vCPU-minute on a paid platform plan, so 36,000 vCPU-minutes would be USD 144.00 and 87,600 USD 350.40.
free tier kind	monthly-vcpu-minute
session cap	`{"wall_clock_min": 240,"idle_reap_s": null,"restart_required": true,"note": "4 hours per job on the Free plan; the 2,000 vCPU-minute monthly pool runs out far sooner. The environment is destroyed at job end."}`
concurrency	`{"jobs_at_once": 10,"note": "20 vCPU of Linux concurrency on the Free plan, and the only shape is 2 vCPU, so 10 machines at once. Quoted: 'the Free plan's 20-vCPU Linux limit supports up to 10 Small Linux machines at 2 vCPU each'."}`
keep rate	`{"value": 0.0,"basis": "the environment is destroyed at job end; cache volumes persist at no stated charge","source": "https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/hosted-agents"}`
persistent storage	`{"included_gib": 0,"price_gib_month": "not published; cache volumes are 'included at no additional cost' with a 50 GB container cache and 5 GB git mirror default quota","durability": "the job environment is destroyed; cache volumes persist across jobs","survives_stop": false,"survives_destroy": false,"max_retention": "the job, except cache volumes"}`
network out	`{"allow_outbound": true,"allow_inbound_listen": false,"ports": "none inbound: no page read offers a public address and the environment is destroyed at job end","static_ip": false,"ipv6": null,"per_session_bytes": null}`
units	RAM and disk are the vendor's decimal GB, kept unconverted. 4 GB reads as 4, 47 GB as 47.
granularity	`{"min_billed_s": 1,"rounding_s": 1,"note": "quoted for the paid rate: 'billed per vCPU minute and metered to the second, with no minimums and no rounding'"}`
burst x	10.0
burst note	10 concurrent 2 vCPU small machines on the Free plan's 20 vCPU of Linux concurrency. burst_x is that concurrency multiplier over a single runner.
topic note	belongs to ci-cd-runners
checked	`{"verified": ["2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month on the Free plan","20 vCPU Linux concurrency = 10 small machines","the small shape is 2 vCPU / 4 GB / 47 GB","4-hour job timeout on the Free plan","no credit card required"],"new": null}`

Unknown values 5

egress metered: egress metering was not published
interface: the access interface was not established
per object cap stated: the field does not apply to this kind of offer
reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field

Buildkite hosted agents

Compute

buildkite.com/pricingCI runnercompute/buildkite-hostedJSON compare report an error

Free allowance: A Free plan with no card: up to 10 concurrent jobs, 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month and 250,000 test executions a month, plus a 30-day all-access trial
Verdict: caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
Cost: free tier
Identity: emailno card, no phone
Binding limit: request-rate2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month on Free, 4,000 on Pro; 10 concurrent jobs on Free, and up to 250 concurrent agents with 10 included on Pro
Evidence: documented4 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-30checked 2026-10-30 (live); stale on 2026-11-30

Free tier	a Free plan with no card: up to 10 concurrent jobs, 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month and 250,000 test executions a month, plus a 30-day all-access trial unit minutes; metered on wall-clock
Price	none stated
Limits	request-rate (binding) 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes a month on Free, 4,000 on Pro source request-rate (binding) 10 concurrent jobs on Free, and up to 250 concurrent agents with 10 included on Pro source per-object-cap 250,000 test executions a month on Free source not stated
Identity	email 'No credit card required' on the Free Plan, quoted from buildkite.com/pricing read 2026-10-22
Egress	not stated
Per-object cap	not stated
Retention	not stated
Interface	unknown
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Evidence note	documented the pricing page was read on 2026-10-22 and states the Free plan's three caps and that no card is required. The record carried a USD 16 credit that the page does not show
Parsed numbers	has-free-tier 1

Evidence 4

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-02	buildkite.com/pricing	not published
2026-10-22	buildkite.com/pricing	'Start Free or Pro with 30 days of the all-access trial. No credit card or commitment.' and the Free Plan's 'Up to 10 concurrent jobs', 'Up to 2,000 Linux vCPU minutes per month', 'Up to 250k test executions per month', 'No credit card required', quoted
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/docs/agent/buildkite-hosted/macos	macOS hosted agents are not part of the Free plan, which is what the record describes
2026-10-30	buildkite.com/pricing	the Free plan needs no card and lists 10 concurrent jobs, 2,000 Linux vCPU-minutes and 250k test executions a month; Pro includes 4,000 vCPU-minutes

More fields 6

keep rate	1.0
billing model	unclassified
session cap	`{"wall_clock_min": null,"idle_reap_s": null,"restart_required": false,"note": "a job has its own timeout; the monthly vCPU-minute pool is what runs out"}`
free tier kind	allowance
granularity	`{"min_billed_s": 0,"rounding_s": null}`
burst x	1.0

Unknown values 10

chaining: a source was read and is silent on this field
egress metered: egress metering was not published
egress terms: a source was read and is silent on this field
interface: the access interface was not established
limits note: a source was read and is silent on this field
per object cap stated: a source was read and is silent on this field
reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
retention stated: a source was read and is silent on this field
tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field

buildkite artifacts

Storage

buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/artifact-retentionstorage/buildkite-artifactsJSON compare report an error

Free allowance: Metered both ways: storage billed per GB-month and transfer billed per GB beyond plan inclusion, and retention maxes at 7/30/90 days depending on plan.
Verdict: fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
Cost: not stated
Identity: email?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
Binding limit: noneno named constraint binds
Evidence: reported3 sources; a third party said so
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05

Free tier	Metered both ways: storage billed per GB-month and transfer billed per GB beyond plan inclusion, and retention maxes at 7/30/90 days depending on plan. Full custom retention is an… unit none; metered on none
Price	none stated
Identity	email (placeholder) not published
Egress	not recorded
Interface	unknown
Tooling	not recorded

Evidence 3

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-21	buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/configure/artifact-retention	the text of Free tier, above
2026-10-21	buildkite.com/docs/platform/artifact-storage-and-transfer-bi	cited as the basis of the rejection: Metered both ways: storage billed per GB-month and transfer billed per GB beyond plan inclusion, and retention maxes at 7/30/90 days depending on plan. Full custom retention is an Enterprise
2026-10-21	api.buildkite.com/v2/artifacts	cited as the basis of the rejection: Metered both ways: storage billed per GB-month and transfer billed per GB beyond plan inclusion, and retention maxes at 7/30/90 days depending on plan. Full custom retention is an Enterprise

More fields 1

dead end	`{"failure_class": "retention","why": "Metered both ways: storage billed per GB-month and transfer billed per GB beyond plan inclusion, and retention maxes at 7/30/90 days depending on plan. Full custom retention is an…","retry_when": null,"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"}`

Unknown values 7

chaining: no value was recorded for this field
egress terms: no value was recorded for this field
interface: the access interface was not established
per object cap notes: no value was recorded for this field
per object cap stated: no value was recorded for this field
retention stated: no value was recorded for this field
tooling: no value was recorded for this field