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The decision that sets your bill is made early and casually: do builds run on someone else's machines by the minute, or on machines you already pay for?
- Already on GitHub, builds are small → GitHub Actions. You are probably already here.
- Builds are long or need specific hardware → Buildkite: hosted orchestration, your own compute. Usually cheaper than pure hosted and routinely overlooked.
- You want to own the whole thing → Jenkins, or Woodpecker CI if Jenkins is too much
- Already on GitLab → GitLab CI/CD
- You need GitOps deployment, not builds → Flux CD or Argo CD
- Your problem is slow builds, not CI → a build system: Bazel, Turborepo, Nx
That last one matters. The most common mistake here is changing CI provider to fix a slow-build problem when the answer was a build system, or the reverse.
What is actually in this list
Ranking Bazel against CircleCI tells you nothing. Bazel runs inside CircleCI.
| Job | Products |
|---|---|
| Hosted pipeline runners | CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Buildkite, Semaphore, Travis CI, Codefresh, Harness |
| Self-hosted runners | Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Woodpecker CI, Concourse CI, GoCD, Drone, TeamCity |
| GitOps controllers (no builds) | Argo CD, Flux CD, Spinnaker, Tekton |
| Build systems | Bazel, Turborepo, Nx, Dagger, Earthly |
Compare: runners
| Runner | Run by | Cost from | Integrations | Score | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CircleCI | CircleCI | $15/mo, free tier | 18 | 76.4 | 0.74 |
| GitHub Actions | GitHub | Free tier, 30-day trial | 31 | 70.0 | 0.71 |
| Buildkite | Hybrid | Free tier, 30-day trial | 48 | 65.3 | 0.72 |
| Semaphore | Semaphore | $0.00/mo | 1 | 62.5 | 0.70 |
| Travis CI | Travis | $13.75/mo | 11 | 59.1 | 0.19 |
| GitLab CI/CD | Either | Free tier | 8 | 56.0 | 0.66 |
| Jenkins | You | Free | 1 | 52.7 | 0.76 |
| Harness | Harness | Free tier | 32 | 50.8 | 0.24 |
| Codefresh | Codefresh | Free tier | 15 | 50.2 | 0.29 |
| Concourse CI | You | Not published | 4 | 52.8 | 0.49 |
| Woodpecker CI | You | Free | 0 | 58.3 | 0.43 |
| GoCD | You | Free tier | 7 | 49.7 | 0.49 |
| Drone | You | Free | 7 | 49.9 | 0.18 |
| TeamCity | You | Free tier | 6 | 46.1 | 0.28 |
CircleCI
From $15/month, usage-based, free tier. 18 integrations. Score 76.4, confidence 0.74, the strongest combination here.
Pick it ifyou want a mature hosted runner and are not tied to GitHub or GitLab.
GitHub Actions
Free tier, 30-day trial. 31 integrations. Score 70.0, confidence 0.71.
The one most teams end up on without a decision being made, because it is already there.
Pick it ifyour builds are modest and you value zero setup. Don't assume it stays cheap; per-minute cost on larger runners is where people notice.
Buildkite
Free tier, 30-day trial. 48 integrations, the most of anything on this page.
Hosted orchestration, your own compute.
Pick it ifbuilds are long, need specific hardware, or the hosted bill has become a problem. Don't if you do not want to maintain build agents.
Jenkins
MIT, free. 26,532 stars. Shipped 2026-09-10. No advisories against core. Score 52.7, confidence 0.76, the highest here.
Still the most-deployed CI system in the world.
Pick it ifyou want total control and have someone to operate it. Don't read "no advisories" as safe: Jenkins' security history lives in its plugin ecosystem, which our advisory data does not cover. A Jenkins install is only as sound as its plugins.
Woodpecker CI
Apache-2.0, free. 7,857 stars. Shipped 2026-09-08. 3 advisories, 1 recent.
Pick it ifJenkins is more than you need. This is where our own traffic points, via woodpecker ci alternatives.
GitOps controllers, and a number worth seeing
| Controller | Licence | Stars | Advisories | Last 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Argo CD | Apache-2.0 | 24,094 | 37 | 6, CRITICAL |
| Tekton | Apache-2.0 | 9,062 | 8 | 7, CRITICAL |
| Flux CD | Apache-2.0 | 5,403 | 0 | 0 |
| Spinnaker | Not recorded | n/a | n/a | n/a |
Argo CD carries 37 advisories with 6 in the last twelve months; Tekton disclosed 7 of its 8 in the last year. Both CRITICAL at maximum.
That deserves proportion rather than alarm: a GitOps controller holds cluster credentials and sits in the deployment path, so it attracts scrutiny, and both have active security processes. Argo CD's 24,094 stars reflect very wide deployment. But if you run either, "we upgrade when we remember" is not a strategy that survives this data.
Flux CD records zero advisories, shipped 2026-09-01, 25 integrations. For a team choosing GitOps now and weighting security history, that is a real point in its favour.
Build systems
| Tool | Licence | Stars | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bazel | Apache-2.0 | 25,825 | Free | Large polyglot monorepos. Setup cost is real |
| Turborepo | MIT | 31,080 | Free | JS monorepos. 2 MODERATE advisories this year |
| Nx | Not recorded | n/a | From $29/mo | JS monorepos, lower adoption cost than Bazel |
| Dagger | Apache-2.0 | 16,245 | From $50/mo | Pipelines as code that run identically locally and in CI |
| Earthly | Not recorded | n/a | Quote-based |
Dagger addresses the most common CI complaint: that you can only debug a pipeline by pushing to it.
How we scored this
Signals are properties of the software: licence, release cadence, published advisories, integrations, pricing transparency. No reviews, no company size, no web traffic, no vendor ad spend. Facts retrieved 2026-09-11. Full method · Independence
Confidence 0.07 to 0.76. Spinnaker at 0.07 should be treated as unmeasured.
The cost question this page opens with is one we cannot answer from outside. Effective CI cost depends on build duration, concurrency, cache hit rates and runner size. Published per-minute pricing tells you very little, so we have reported it and flagged the limit rather than ranking on it.
Advisory data covers the core project only, which matters most for Jenkins, and hosted services publish none at all.
best live cd tools also appears in the search data for this category. That refers to bootable Linux images and has nothing to do with continuous delivery, which is a good illustration of why we check head terms before writing to them.