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Free CI & Dev Environments Tiers Compared

6 services. Limits as published by each vendor; click the date to open the source.

Service	Free limits	Catch	Checked
GitHub Actions (GitHub Free) Free tier	Public repos (standard runners)Free, not counted Private repos: included compute$12 USD / month (about 2,000 standard Linux minutes at $0.006/min) Artifact storage500 MB Cache storage10 GB / repository	Private-repo usage is now metered in dollars, not minutes: each runner type draws its own rate from the $12 monthly allowance. Larger runners are billed even in public repos. Self-hosted runners are free.	9 Nov 2026
GitHub Codespaces (GitHub Free) Free tier	Compute time120 hours / month Storage15 GB-month GitHub Pro180 hours, 20 GB-month	Included usage applies to personal accounts; anything beyond it is billed to the account owner. Not available for repositories owned by managed user accounts.	9 Nov 2026
Doppler (Developer) Free tier	Users3 free, then $8/mo per additional user Projects10 Environments4 Service tokens50 Config syncs5 Activity log retention3 days	Secrets manager rather than CI. Change requests, SAML SSO, RBAC and automatic secret rotation need Team ($21/user/month).	10 Nov 2026
GitLab CI/CD (GitLab.com Free) Free tier	Compute minutes (shared runners)400 / month per top-level group Storage10 GiB per project (Git repo + LFS) Users5 per private top-level group Own runnersUnlimited, not counted	A credit or debit card is required to use GitLab's shared runners on Free (verified with a $1 authorisation, not charged); bring your own runner to avoid it. The 5-user cap applies to private top-level groups. Premium ($29/user/month) includes 10,000 minutes.	11 Nov 2026
CircleCI (Free) Free tier	Credits30,000 / month (up to 6,000 small Docker build minutes) Active users5 Concurrency30 jobs (1 for macOS) Storage / network2 GB / 1 GB Self-hosted runner tasks5 concurrent	Minutes depend on the resource class: Linux Medium uses 10 credits a minute, so 30,000 credits is about 3,000 minutes. Free credits expire monthly and do not roll over. Open-source projects can get up to 400,000 credits a month on Linux, Arm and Docker.	11 Nov 2026
Infisical (Free) Free tier	Identities (users + machines)5 ProjectsUnlimited Environments3 Secret syncs10 RegionsUS or EU cloud	Secrets manager rather than CI. No secret versioning, point-in-time recovery, rotation or audit log retention on Free; Pro is $20 per identity/month (annual). The MIT-licensed core is free to self-host.	11 Nov 2026

FAQ

Which ci & dev environments services have a free tier?

6 of the 6 ci & dev environments services tracked here list a free tier or free allowance: GitHub Actions, GitHub Codespaces, Doppler, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, Infisical.

What are the common catches with free ci & dev environments tiers?

GitHub Actions: Private-repo usage is now metered in dollars, not minutes: each runner type draws its own rate from the $12 monthly allowance. Larger runners are billed even in public repos. Self-hosted runners are free. GitHub Codespaces: Included usage applies to personal accounts; anything beyond it is billed to the account owner. Not available for repositories owned by managed user accounts. Doppler: Secrets manager rather than CI. Change requests, SAML SSO, RBAC and automatic secret rotation need Team ($21/user/month). GitLab CI/CD: A credit or debit card is required to use GitLab's shared runners on Free (verified with a $1 authorisation, not charged); bring your own runner to avoid it. The 5-user cap applies to private top-level groups. Premium ($29/user/month) includes 10,000 minutes.

How current are these ci & dev environments free-tier limits?

Each limit is copied from the vendor's own pricing or limits page and rechecked on a rotating basis. In this category the newest check was 11 Nov 2026 and the oldest 9 Nov 2026. Click any date in the table to open the source.