CircleCI
circleci.com · 3 records in CI runners, Compute, Storage · JSON
Records 3
- caveatCircleCI Free
CI runnersfree tieridentity emailno cardlimit request-rateevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-30
- caveatCircleCI
Computefree tieridentity email?card?limit request-rateevidence documentedstale on 2026-11-22duplicate
- fails: quotaCircleCI artifacts
Storagefree tieridentity email?card?limit retention-clampedevidence reportedstale on 2026-11-05
CircleCI Free
CI runners- Free allowance
- 30,000 credits a month on the Free plan, with up to 5 active users and 30x concurrency; open-source projects get up to 400,000 credits a month for Linux, Arm and Docker builds, and macOS and Windows open-source builds draw on the 30,000
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rate30,000 credits a month on Free; every credit expires at the end of the month; 30x concurrency on Free, and 5 active users
- Evidence
- documented13 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 | 30,000 credits a month on the Free plan, with up to 5 active users and 30x concurrency; open-source projects get up to 400,000 credits a month for Linux, Arm and Docker builds, and macOS and Windows open-source builds draw on the 30,000 unit credits; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits | |
| Identity | email an email address and a password, verified by email, for GitHub, GitLab or Cursor Origin projects; a Bitbucket account for Bitbucket Cloud projects; the Free plan needs no credit card |
| Egress | network transfer is billed only for traffic from CircleCI to self-hosted runners; the Free plan includes 1 GB of network transfer and 2 GB-months of storage, and use beyond these draws from the monthly credits at 420 credits per GB |
| Per-object cap | 1 hour maximum job runtime on the Free plan; 3 hours on Performance and 5 hours on Scale |
| Retention | credits expire monthly and do not roll over; caches and artifacts expire per configuration |
| Interface | git, cli a .circleci/config.yml pipeline; the CircleCI API and CLI |
| Tooling | the CircleCI convenience images; docker; any shell |
| Composes with | the largest credit pool of the hosted CI providers here, and the only one that scales with public rather than private visibility by a factor above ten |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | Every job on the Free plan stops at 1 hour, so both the 400,000-credit open-source pool and the 30,000-credit pool are spent in jobs of at most 1 hour. The vendor's credits page gives the macOS open-source allowance as 30,000 credits a month in one section and 25,000 in another, so that figure is unsettled. |
| Evidence note | documented the pricing page was read; the credits doc was read for the overage rate. The 5,000-credit figure in circulation is the pre-2025 plan. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 13
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | circleci.com/pricing/ | Free: 30,000 credits a month, 5 active users, 30x concurrency; 400,000 credits a month for public repositories |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | credits are consumed by machine size and duration; network and storage beyond the threshold are 420 credits per GB |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/pricing/ | the 400,000-credit pool is for open-source Linux, Arm and Docker builds |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/pricing/ | the Free plan is metered in credits, 30,000 a month |
| 2026-10-30 | support.circleci.com/en/articles/15091447-max-runtime-in-cir | a job on the Free plan stops at 1 hour |
| 2026-10-30 | support.circleci.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410707277083-Context | a build on the Free plan stops at 1 hour |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | the Free plan includes 1 GB of network transfer and 2 GB-months of storage |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | outbound traffic from a hosted job is not billed; only traffic to self-hosted runners is |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/docs/guides/getting-started/first-steps/ | sign-up is by email address for GitHub, GitLab and Cursor Origin projects |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/docs/guides/getting-started/first-steps/ | Bitbucket Cloud projects sign up with a Bitbucket account |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/pricing/ | the Free plan needs no credit card |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | one section of the credits page gives the macOS open-source allowance as 25,000 credits a month |
| 2026-10-30 | circleci.com/pricing/ | Free-plan credits are monthly and do not roll over |
Unknown values 1
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed
CircleCI
Compute- Free allowance
- not published
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- email?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- request-ratemachine time costs from 5 to 120 credits a minute depending on the resource class
- Evidence
- documented2 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22
| Free tier | not published unit none; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
not stated |
| Identity | email (placeholder) not published |
| Egress | not stated |
| Per-object cap | not stated |
| Retention | not stated |
| Interface | unknown |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Evidence note | documented the price list was read on 2026-10-22 and carries the machine rates as credits per minute. The free allowance is not on this page, so the record's free-tier claim is not settled by it and the rung stays reported on that field |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 2
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-02 | circleci.com/pricing/price-list/ | not published |
| 2026-10-22 | circleci.com/pricing/price-list/ | the price list was read on 2026-10-22 and publishes per-minute credit costs from 5 credits a minute to 120: 'Cost (credits/min) 5 credits/min, 10, 15, 20, 40, 80, 100'. It states no free plan on this page |
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 credit balance is what runs out"} |
| free tier kind | allowance |
| granularity | {"min_billed_s": 1,"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
CircleCI artifacts
Storage- Free allowance
- The Free plan (30,000 credits a month) includes 1 GB of network transfer and 2 GB-months of storage; storage beyond that draws from the monthly credits at 420 credits per GB-month.
- Verdict
- fails: quotathe free allowance is too small to matter
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- email?placeholder, not evidence; card unknown, phone unknown
- Binding limit
- retention-clampedretention default AND maximum is 30 days; retention 30 days
- Evidence
- reported10 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | The Free plan (30,000 credits a month) includes 1 GB of network transfer and 2 GB-months of storage; storage beyond that draws from the monthly credits at 420 credits per GB-month. Artifact retention default and maximum is 30 days. unit mixed; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
3 GB max per individual artifact file; retention 30 days maximum (workspaces/caches 15 days max); storage beyond plan is billed. |
| Identity | email (placeholder) an email address for GitHub, GitLab or Cursor Origin projects; a Bitbucket account for Bitbucket Cloud projects; the Free plan needs no credit card |
| Egress | Free download from app.circleci.com; artifacts are 'protected with your CircleCI account for private projects' — public-project artifacts are reachable, private are not. |
| Per-object cap | 3 GB maximum size for an individual artifact file |
| Retention | Artifact retention default AND maximum is 30 days on Cloud; storage usage is a billed meter, not an allowance (30 days) |
| Interface | s3, rest, rclone rest |
| Tooling | REST v2 artifacts endpoint; artifacts stored on Amazon S3 behind CircleCI. No rclone backend, no first-class bulk client. |
| Composes with | Unlimited projects x 3 GB per file, but the 30-day hard ceiling makes this a rolling buffer, not storage. |
| Reliability | 30-day deletion is unconditional and irreversible. Purely a CI convenience store. |
| Notes | No storage quota advertised on Free (30,000 credits/month). Artifact retention default AND maximum is 30 days on Cloud; storage usage is a billed meter, not an allowance. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 10
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | circleci.com/docs/guides/optimize/artifacts/ | 'Individual artifact files have a maximum size limit of 3GB'; 'By default, artifact storage duration is set to 30 days ... Currently, 30 days is also the maximum storage duration you can set' |
| 2026-10-21 | circleci.com/docs/guides/optimize/persist-data/ | 'Artifacts (default and maximum is 30 days)' |
| 2026-10-21 | circleci.com/pricing/ | Free plan, 30,000 credits |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | the Free plan includes 2 GB-months of storage |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | storage usage beyond the allotment is paid from the monthly credits |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.circleci.com/guides/plans-pricing/credits | overage is priced at 420 credits per GB-month |
| 2026-11-03 | circleci.com/docs/guides/optimize/artifacts/ | the per-file artifact cap is 3 GB |
| 2026-11-03 | circleci.com/docs/guides/getting-started/first-steps/ | sign-up for GitHub, GitLab and Cursor Origin projects is by email address |
| 2026-11-03 | circleci.com/pricing/ | the Free plan asks for no credit card |
| 2026-11-03 | circleci.com/docs/guides/optimize/artifacts/ | artifact retention maximum is 30 days |
More fields 1
| dead end | {"failure_class": "retention","why": "No storage quota advertised on Free (30,000 credits/month). Artifact retention default AND maximum is 30 days on Cloud; storage usage is a billed meter, not an allowance.","retry_when": null,"first_recorded": "2026-10-21"} |
|---|
Unknown values 2
- per object cap notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read
- retention notes: the field may be stated in a source that was not read