GitHub Actions vs GitLab CI vs CircleCI vs Travis CI
Four CI/CD providers with very different free tiers — unlimited minutes on public GitHub repos, self-hostable pipelines with a generous SaaS quota, the largest recurring free minute allowance with Docker-first config, and the classic open-source CI — compared on free minutes, concurrency, and self-hosting.
| GitHub Actions | GitLab CI/CD | CircleCI | Travis CI | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier note | Unlimited free minutes for public repos; 2,000 minutes/month on private repos with 1 concurrent job — the de-facto CI for open source, native to GitHub. | 400 compute minutes/month free on GitLab SaaS; unlimited CI on self-hosted runners (open-source). Built-in Docker + Kubernetes integration and a single .gitlab-ci.yml. | 6,000 free build minutes/month with 1 concurrent job and 1 user — the most generous recurring free minute quota, Docker-first config. | Free for public open-source repos (unlimited); 10,000 one-time credits for private builds — credit-based, no recurring free minute quota for private work. |
| Bandwidth | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Builds | 2000 minutes/month (private), unlimited on public repos | 400 compute minutes/month on SaaS | 6000 build minutes/month | 10000 credits (one-time) |
| Requests | 1 concurrent job | unlimited on self-hosted runners | 1 concurrent job, 1 user | unlimited on public open-source repos |
| Custom domains | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Paid from | $4/mo | $29/mo | $15/mo | $69/mo |
| Generosity ★ | 15 | 19 | 4 | 19 |
| Last verified | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 | 2025-09-01 |
| Visit site | GitHub Actions ↗ | GitLab CI/CD ↗ | CircleCI ↗ | Travis CI ↗ |
Data verified 2025-09-01.