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 pageCircleCI vs Trigger.dev
Our take
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. Pick Trigger.dev if app teams who will burn the Free $5 credits on a first durable task, then buy Hobby $10 or Pro $50 when concurrency and retention matter.
Best for
CircleCI A CI pipeline you start at $0
Trigger.dev Long-running agents or background jobs you meter in credits
Free plan
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
Trigger.dev $0 · /month. $5 free credits. 20 concurrent runs. 5 members. 10 schedules. 1-day logs. 10 Realtime connections. Community support
Lowest paid
CircleCI Performance $15/mo
Trigger.dev Invocation $0.000025
Next step up
CircleCI Prepaid credits $600
Trigger.dev Compute $0.0000338
Runs where
CircleCI Hosted
Trigger.dev
Watch out
CircleCI Free credits expire monthly
Trigger.dev Free is $5 of credits, then you stop
Last checked
CircleCI 2026-10-23 · circleci.com/pricing
Trigger.dev 2026-10-22 · trigger.dev/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Trigger.dev if
app teams who will burn the Free $5 credits on a first durable task, then buy Hobby $10 or Pro $50 when concurrency and retention matter.
Read the Trigger.dev page