Pick Buildkite if
cI teams who will stay on Free at $0 while they create a first pipeline, then buy Pro at $30 / active user / month when they need more than 10 self-hosted agents or hosted minutes.
Read the Buildkite pageBuildkite vs CircleCI
Our take
Pick Buildkite if cI teams who will stay on Free at $0 while they create a first pipeline, then buy Pro at $30 / active user / month when they need more than 10 self-hosted agents or hosted minutes. Pick CircleCI if teams who will stay on Free at $0 (30k credits, 5 users) while they open a first pipelines dashboard, then Performance when a sixth committer is $15/month or they buy another 25,000 credits for $15.
Best for
Buildkite YAML steps you start at $0 (self-hosted agents or hosted minutes)
CircleCI A CI pipeline you start at $0
Free plan
Buildkite $0 · solo / small teams. Up to 250 concurrent jobs and 50 active users on the compare we fetched
CircleCI $0 · 30,000 credits / month (expire; no rollover). 5 active users. Up to 6,000 small-Docker minutes. 30× concurrency. 1 GB runner network. 2 GB storage
Lowest paid
Buildkite Linux hosted agents $0.004
CircleCI Performance $15/mo
Next step up
Buildkite Mac hosted agents $0.02
CircleCI Prepaid credits $600
Coding agent
Buildkite Self-hosted agents
CircleCI
Runs where
Buildkite Local or hosted
CircleCI Hosted
Watch out
Buildkite Free $0 is not unlimited hosted minutes
CircleCI Free credits expire monthly
Last checked
Buildkite 2026-10-23 · buildkite.com/pricing
CircleCI 2026-10-23 · circleci.com/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick CircleCI if
teams who will stay on Free at $0 (30k credits, 5 users) while they open a first pipelines dashboard, then Performance when a sixth committer is $15/month or they buy another 25,000 credits for $15.
Read the CircleCI page