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CircleCI vs Buildkite

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of CircleCI and Buildkite built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 23 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose CircleCI if…

Teams running mostly on self-hosted runners, where build-minute cost disappears entirely and the credits system only meters users and premium features.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Buildkite if…

Teams that already run their own compute and want a CI product built around that from the start, rather than one that treats self-hosting as an escape hatch from a hosted-minutes model.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • CircleCI: The workload is small and simple — a credits system adds a layer of currency conversion a flat per-minute or per-user price doesn't.
  • Buildkite: There's no existing infrastructure to run agents on — the per-user Pro price is separate from and additional to whatever compute the agents themselves need.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: CircleCI alternatives · Buildkite alternatives

18 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit CircleCI documentationVisit Buildkite documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionCircleCIBuildkite
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
What the free plan includes30,000 credits a month for 5 active users; extra users are $15 each.A Free plan, or Pro with a 30-day all-access trial. Buildkite no longer publishes the free plan's user and minute limits on this page.
Credit card to startNoNo
Entry paid planPerformance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits.Pro plan: $30 per active user/month.
Pricing modelCredits-based: purchased up-front and consumed in real time for compute usage, active users and premium features. Network egress beyond the plan allowance is billed at 420 credits per GB.Hybrid: per-user subscription plus consumption-based pricing for hosted agents, billed per vCPU-minute metered to the second, with no minimums and no rounding.
Limits
Build allowanceUp to 6,000 build minutes per month on the free plan, measured on a small Docker resource class (30,000 free credits/month).Up to 2,000 Linux hosted-agent vCPU minutes a month on Free (Small shape only); 4,000 included on Pro then per-minute rates; volume discounts on Enterprise. vCPU minutes, not job minutes: a job burns its instance shape's vCPU count per minute of runtime.
Concurrent builds
30 concurrent job runs on Free, 80 on Performance, unlimited on Scale; macOS VM concurrency is 1 / 15 / custom.
Free: up to 10 concurrent jobs. Pro: up to 250 concurrent agents, 10 included then $3.50 per agent/month. Enterprise: unlimited, with volume discounts.
Infrastructure
RegionsCloud jobs run on AWS (us-east-1, us-east-2), GCP (us-east1, us-central1) and CircleCI's own macOS cloud.Buildkite hosted agents run in a purpose-built private cloud, hosted exclusively in US East Coast data centers. Hosted agents platform only; this page names no other region and does not say where the control plane runs.
CI/CD
Max job duration
Maximum job runtime is 1 hour on the Free plan, 3 hours on Performance and 5 hours on Scale.
4 hours on the Free plan; unlimited on the Pro and Enterprise plans. This is the maximum time before a running job times out.
Self-hosted runnersSupported on every tier: 5 concurrent self-hosted tasks on Free, 20 on Performance, unlimited on Scale. No per-minute charge for self-hosted runner builds.Self-hosted agents are the default execution model, not an add-on. Free: up to 10 concurrent jobs. Pro: up to 250 agents, 10 included, then $3.50 per agent/month. Enterprise: unlimited.
Price per extra concurrent jobNo price per extra concurrent job: concurrency is included as a plan limit and CircleCI bills compute time used, not the number of resources you can access.Additional self-hosted agents beyond the 10 included on Pro: $3.50/agent/month. Hosted Linux agents: $0.004/vCPU-minute; hosted Mac agents: $0.02/vCPU-minute.
Support
Support on entry paid plan
Sold as an optional add-on rather than included: 8x5 support on the credit-based plan, 24/7 support on Scale. Buying the product does not buy a support level.
Priority email support on Pro, the entry paid plan. Free gets community support; Enterprise adds SLA credits, priority response times and Slack Connect.
Compliance
SOC 2SOC 2 Type II compliant.SOC 2 Type II report, from an independent audit performed annually.
GDPR / data residencyProcesses EU and UK residents' personal data under the EU and UK GDPR; a DPA is available to sign. Page covers processing commitments only; it names no data-residency or EU-hosting option.Servers for the Buildkite service are in the USA; Buildkite Hosted Agents servers may be in the USA or Europe. GDPR applies to EU/UK personal data. The hosted agents docs state US East Coast data centers only; the privacy policy also allows Europe.
PCI DSS
Card payments run through Stripe's own PCI compliance — not a direct PCI-DSS certification of CircleCI's own platform.
Not PCI DSS compliant: the Terms of Service state Buildkite is not a payment card processor and the Buildkite Solution is neither HIPAA nor PCI DSS compliant.
Encryption at rest
Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit; source code is not encrypted at rest, secured behind DMZ, bastion hosts and firewalls.
AES-256 at rest; TLS 1.2+ in transit.
Customer-managed keys
Self-hosted CircleCI server: the operator generates the Tink keyset encrypting context environment variables, plus artifact encryption and signing keysets. Scope: the self-hosted CircleCI server installation guide, not CircleCI cloud.
No customer-supplied keys: the Enterprise private job log archiving bucket must use SSE-S3, and SSE-KMS encryption is not supported. Read on the private job log archiving page (Enterprise plan; customer-owned S3 bucket, us-east-1 only).
Role-based access controlOrganization and project roles (admin, contributor, viewer) with a published permissions matrix; roles can also be assigned to groups.Team-based permissions restricting access to builds, pipelines and organization settings, plus per-job OIDC integration with the customer's own identity provider.
Private networking / VPCSite-to-site connectivity, an encrypted tunnel from cloud jobs to resources behind your firewall, is in preview on the Scale plan.Agents connect to the Buildkite platform over regular public internet connections using HTTPS; Buildkite recommends OIDC or IP allowlists rather than VPNs.
Dedicated infrastructure
Server plan runs CircleCI on-prem or in your private cloud behind your firewall, with an air-gapped install option.
Hosted agent infrastructure is shared across Buildkite customers; dedicated static IP addresses only on request from support. Self-hosting uses your own infra.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

What the free plan includes

CircleCI
30,000 credits a month for 5 active users; extra users are $15 each.
Buildkite
A Free plan, or Pro with a 30-day all-access trial. Buildkite no longer publishes the free plan's user and minute limits on this page.
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

CircleCI
Performance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits.
Buildkite
Pro plan: $30 per active user/month.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

CircleCI
Credits-based: purchased up-front and consumed in real time for compute usage, active users and premium features. Network egress beyond the plan allowance is billed at 420 credits per GB.
Buildkite
Hybrid: per-user subscription plus consumption-based pricing for hosted agents, billed per vCPU-minute metered to the second, with no minimums and no rounding.
Sources (2) →
  • CircleCI Pricing ↗

    “Credits are purchased up-front and are used to pay for CircleCI platform usage in real time. Network egress...charged at a rate of 420 credits per GB.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Buildkite Pricing ↗

    “Usage is billed per vCPU minute and metered to the second, with no minimums and no rounding.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

Build allowance

CircleCI
Up to 6,000 build minutes per month on the free plan, measured on a small Docker resource class (30,000 free credits/month).
Buildkite
Up to 2,000 Linux hosted-agent vCPU minutes a month on Free (Small shape only); 4,000 included on Pro then per-minute rates; volume discounts on Enterprise. vCPU minutes, not job minutes: a job burns its instance shape's vCPU count per minute of runtime.
Sources (2) →

Concurrent builds

CircleCI

30 concurrent job runs on Free, 80 on Performance, unlimited on Scale; macOS VM concurrency is 1 / 15 / custom.

Buildkite

Free: up to 10 concurrent jobs. Pro: up to 250 concurrent agents, 10 included then $3.50 per agent/month. Enterprise: unlimited, with volume discounts.

Sources (2) →

Regions

CircleCI
Cloud jobs run on AWS (us-east-1, us-east-2), GCP (us-east1, us-central1) and CircleCI's own macOS cloud.
Buildkite
Buildkite hosted agents run in a purpose-built private cloud, hosted exclusively in US East Coast data centers. Hosted agents platform only; this page names no other region and does not say where the control plane runs.
Sources (2) →
  • IP ranges - CircleCI Docs ↗

    “not just jobs opted into IP ranges, are hosted on the following platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Google Cloud Platform (GCP) [...] AWS : CircleCI uses the us-east-1 and us-east-2 regions. GCP : CircleCI uses the us-east1 and us-central1 regions.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Buildkite hosted agents | Buildkite Documentation ↗

    “Runs in a private cloud, which is purpose built and optimized for CI/CD workloads. [...] Is exclusively hosted in US East Coast data centers, operated by a trusted infrastructure provider, strategically selected to provide optimal performance, reliability and low-latency connectivity to major cloud regions.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Max job duration

CircleCI

Maximum job runtime is 1 hour on the Free plan, 3 hours on Performance and 5 hours on Scale.

Buildkite

4 hours on the Free plan; unlimited on the Pro and Enterprise plans. This is the maximum time before a running job times out.

Sources (2) →

Self-hosted runners

CircleCI
Supported on every tier: 5 concurrent self-hosted tasks on Free, 20 on Performance, unlimited on Scale. No per-minute charge for self-hosted runner builds.
Buildkite
Self-hosted agents are the default execution model, not an add-on. Free: up to 10 concurrent jobs. Pro: up to 250 agents, 10 included, then $3.50 per agent/month. Enterprise: unlimited.
Sources (2) →
  • CircleCI Pricing ↗

    “Free Performance Scale Self-hosted runner? The amount of concurrent tasks per self-hosted runner is restricted by plan. 5 20 Unlimited [...] CircleCI does not charge per build minute on self-hosted runners.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Buildkite Pricing ↗

    “Self-hosted agents The maximum number of Buildkite agents connected simultaneously. Up to 10 concurrent jobs Up to 250 10 included, then $3.50 agent/month Unlimited Volume discounts”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Price per extra concurrent job

CircleCI
No price per extra concurrent job: concurrency is included as a plan limit and CircleCI bills compute time used, not the number of resources you can access.
Buildkite
Additional self-hosted agents beyond the 10 included on Pro: $3.50/agent/month. Hosted Linux agents: $0.004/vCPU-minute; hosted Mac agents: $0.02/vCPU-minute.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing and Plan Information - CircleCI ↗

    “Concurrent job runs refers to the number of jobs that can run simultaneously without queueing. You pay for compute based on the total amount of time you use compute resources, not the number of resources that you have access to. [...] With usage-based pricing, that means you pay the same amount either way”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Buildkite Pricing ↗

    “10 included, then $3.50 agent/month. Hosted Linux: $0.004 USD per vCPU minute. Mac agents: $0.02 USD per vCPU minute.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction

Support on entry paid plan

CircleCI
Sold as an optional add-on rather than included: 8x5 support on the credit-based plan, 24/7 support on Scale. Buying the product does not buy a support level.
Buildkite
Priority email support on Pro, the entry paid plan. Free gets community support; Enterprise adds SLA credits, priority response times and Slack Connect.
Sources (2) →
  • CircleCI Pricing ↗

    “included free larger resources 80x concurrency optional 8x5 support add-on scale enterprise-level power [...] all environments, even gpu optional 24/7 support add-on”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Buildkite Pricing ↗

    “Dynamic pipelines Community support [...] Dynamic pipelines Priority email support [...] Access to Enterprise support with SLA credits Priority response times Slack Connect”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

SOC 2

CircleCI
SOC 2 Type II compliant.
Buildkite
SOC 2 Type II report, from an independent audit performed annually.
Sources (2) →
  • CircleCI Security ↗

    “SOC 2 Type II provides CircleCI with an opportunity to meet (and exceed) industry standards and gives our customer organization's access to industry-recognized, standardized reports that they can compare across services in our space.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction

  • Security — Buildkite ↗

    “Buildkite maintains a SOC 2 Type II report - an independent audit performed annually that verifies the design and operating effectiveness of our security practices including access controls, system monitoring, threat detection, and incident response.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

GDPR / data residency

CircleCI
Processes EU and UK residents' personal data under the EU and UK GDPR; a DPA is available to sign. Page covers processing commitments only; it names no data-residency or EU-hosting option.
Buildkite
Servers for the Buildkite service are in the USA; Buildkite Hosted Agents servers may be in the USA or Europe. GDPR applies to EU/UK personal data. The hosted agents docs state US East Coast data centers only; the privacy policy also allows Europe.
Sources (2) →
  • Commitment to data privacy - CircleCI ↗

    “CircleCI processes the personal data of customers who are citizens or residents of the European Union in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation, and processes the personal data of customers who are citizens or residents of the United Kingdom in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation. [...] For customers interested in signing a data processing addendum with CircleCI, you can sign our DPA here”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Buildkite Privacy Policy | Information collection and storage | Buildkite ↗

    “Servers for Buildkite’s service are located in the United States of America. If you purchase a Buildkite Hosted Agents, servers may be located in the United States of America or Europe.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

PCI DSS

CircleCI
Card payments run through Stripe's own PCI compliance — not a direct PCI-DSS certification of CircleCI's own platform.
Buildkite
Not PCI DSS compliant: the Terms of Service state Buildkite is not a payment card processor and the Buildkite Solution is neither HIPAA nor PCI DSS compliant.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

CircleCI
Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit; source code is not encrypted at rest, secured behind DMZ, bastion hosts and firewalls.
Buildkite
AES-256 at rest; TLS 1.2+ in transit.
Sources (2) →
  • Your security is our priority - CircleCI ↗

    “Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit, and injected into the runtime environment at the start of a job. [...] Source code is always encrypted via TLS and SSH in transit, but is not encrypted at rest. Source code at rest is secured behind multiple layers of architecture security such as DMZ, bastion hosts, and firewalls.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Security — Buildkite ↗

    “All data in transit is protected using TLS 1.2+ with strong cipher suites. Data at rest is encrypted using AES-256.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

Customer-managed keys

CircleCI
Self-hosted CircleCI server: the operator generates the Tink keyset encrypting context environment variables, plus artifact encryption and signing keysets. Scope: the self-hosted CircleCI server installation guide, not CircleCI cloud.
Buildkite
No customer-supplied keys: the Enterprise private job log archiving bucket must use SSE-S3, and SSE-KMS encryption is not supported. Read on the private job log archiving page (Enterprise plan; customer-owned S3 bucket, us-east-1 only).
Sources (2) →
  • Phase 2 AWS - core services - CircleCI Docs ↗

    “The application requires a Kubernetes Secret containing signing and encryption keysets. These keysets are used to encrypt and sign artifacts generated by CircleCI. [...] CircleCI will not be able to recover the values if lost. [...] All environment variables stored in contexts are encrypted using either Google Tink or HashiCorp Vault”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Job log archiving | Buildkite Documentation ↗

    “With private job log archiving, you can configure your own, private Amazon S3 bucket to store job logs [...] Use SSE-S3 for server-side encryption. SSE-KMS encryption is not supported.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

Role-based access control

CircleCI
Organization and project roles (admin, contributor, viewer) with a published permissions matrix; roles can also be assigned to groups.
Buildkite
Team-based permissions restricting access to builds, pipelines and organization settings, plus per-job OIDC integration with the customer's own identity provider.
Sources (2) →
  • Roles and permissions overview - CircleCI Docs ↗

    “Manage user access to organizations and projects with CircleCI roles and associated permissions. By default, users can access projects based on roles set at an organization level. For more granular control, you can assign roles at the project level. [...] The table below shows the permissions associated with each CircleCI organization role”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Security — Buildkite ↗

    “Team-based permissions allow you to restrict access to builds, pipelines, and organization settings. Buildkite can integrate with your cloud identity solution at a per job level via OIDC.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

Private networking / VPC

CircleCI
Site-to-site connectivity, an encrypted tunnel from cloud jobs to resources behind your firewall, is in preview on the Scale plan.
Buildkite
Agents connect to the Buildkite platform over regular public internet connections using HTTPS; Buildkite recommends OIDC or IP allowlists rather than VPNs.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

CircleCI
Server plan runs CircleCI on-prem or in your private cloud behind your firewall, with an air-gapped install option.
Buildkite
Hosted agent infrastructure is shared across Buildkite customers; dedicated static IP addresses only on request from support. Self-hosting uses your own infra.
Sources (2) →
  • CircleCI server pricing - CircleCI ↗

    “The power of CircleCI, on-prem or in your private cloud. [...] All information stays in your network, with the option for air-gapped install available.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Network security | Buildkite Documentation ↗

    “Since the infrastructure of Buildkite hosted agents is shared across Buildkite customers, the IP address ranges for Buildkite hosted agents originate from a common source [...] If you do require dedicated static IP addresses for your hosted agents’ IP addresses, contact Support at”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

When the free offer endsCircleCI: Never — the plan does not expire, but its monthly credits do: they expire after a month and do not roll over.
HIPAABuildkite: Not HIPAA compliant: the Terms of Service say Buildkite is not a Business Associate and bar customers from putting protected health information in the service.CircleCI: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about CircleCI.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: CircleCI or Buildkite?

CircleCI: Performance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits.

Buildkite: Pro plan: $30 per active user/month.

Should I choose CircleCI or Buildkite?

Pick CircleCI if Teams running mostly on self-hosted runners, where build-minute cost disappears entirely and the credits system only meters users and premium features.

Pick Buildkite if Teams that already run their own compute and want a CI product built around that from the start, rather than one that treats self-hosting as an escape hatch from a hosted-minutes model.

Provider pages

CircleCIDedicated CI/CD platform billed on a credits system, with unmetered self-hosted runner build time.BuildkiteCI/CD built around self-hosted agents by default, with hosted agents available billed per vCPU-minute.

Related comparisons

GitHub Actions vs BuildkiteGitHub Actions vs CircleCI

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.