GitHub Actions vs CircleCI
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of GitHub Actions and CircleCI built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose GitHub Actions if…
Repos already on GitHub — no separate CI product to wire up, and self-hosted runners cost nothing to use beyond the hardware itself.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
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
Consider something else if…
- GitHub Actions: Heavy macOS usage — at $0.062/minute it's by far the most expensive runner type here, and a dedicated CI product may price Mac builds differently.
- 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.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: GitHub Actions alternatives · CircleCI alternatives
16 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
GitHub Actions 0
CircleCI 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | GitHub Actions | CircleCI |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free tier | Free tier |
| What the free plan includes | A per-plan quota of minutes, artifact storage and cache for private repositories, resetting each billing cycle. Minutes on public repositories are free with no quota. | 30,000 credits a month for 5 active users; extra users are $15 each. |
| Credit card to start | No — Blocked rather than billed at the quota, so the included minutes run without one. Larger runners always need one. | No |
| Entry paid plan | GitHub Team: $4 USD per user/month (Free $0, Enterprise $21 USD per user/month). | Performance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits. |
| Pricing model | Per-minute billing beyond the included allowance: $0.006/minute (Linux), $0.010/minute (Windows), $0.062/minute (macOS). Artifact storage overage $0.25/GB-month; cache storage overage $0.07/GB-month. | 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. |
| Limits | ||
| Build allowance | 2,000 minutes/month on GitHub Free; 3,000 on Pro and Team; 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud. | Up to 6,000 build minutes per month on the free plan, measured on a small Docker resource class (30,000 free credits/month). |
| Concurrent builds | Total concurrent jobs on standard GitHub-hosted runners: 20 on Free, 40 Pro, 60 Team, 500 Enterprise; 1,000 on larger runners (Team and Enterprise). GitHub Support can increase these on request. | 30 concurrent job runs on Free, 80 on Performance, unlimited on Scale; macOS VM concurrency is 1 / 15 / custom. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted larger runners is supported in 25 Azure regions on GitHub.com, including EastUs, NorthEurope, UkSouth, AustraliaEast and JapanWest; runners deploy in the same region as your subnet. Region choice applies only to larger runners with Azure private networking, not standard hosted runners. | Cloud jobs run on AWS (us-east-1, us-east-2), GCP (us-east1, us-central1) and CircleCI's own macOS cloud. |
| CI/CD | ||
| Max job duration | Up to 6 hours of execution time per job on GitHub-hosted runners. A job that exceeds this is terminated and fails. | Maximum job runtime is 1 hour on the Free plan, 3 hours on Performance and 5 hours on Scale. |
| Self-hosted runners | Free for self-hosted runners — no usage charges beyond the runner's own infrastructure cost. | 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. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | SOC 1, Type 2 and SOC 2, Type 2 reports are downloadable by enterprise owners from GitHub Enterprise Cloud compliance settings. | SOC 2 Type II compliant. |
| GDPR / data residency | GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency stores enterprise data in a chosen region - EU, Australia, US or Japan; GitHub.com defaults to the USA. | 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. |
| PCI DSS | GitHub PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance is downloadable by enterprise owners from GitHub Enterprise Cloud compliance settings. | Card payments run through Stripe's own PCI compliance — not a direct PCI-DSS certification of CircleCI's own platform. |
| Encryption at rest | Storage disks for GitHub-hosted runners are encrypted at rest; all communications to GitHub are encrypted. Stated in GitHub's own April 2025 CI/CD blog post, not in a compliance report. | Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit; source code is not encrypted at rest, secured behind DMZ, bastion hosts and firewalls. |
| Customer-managed keys | Not supported for Actions blob storage on GitHub Enterprise Server with Google Cloud Storage: the bucket must use Google-managed encryption keys. Scope: Actions blob storage on GitHub Enterprise Server with Google Cloud Storage. | 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. |
| Role-based access control | Predefined and custom organization roles grant permission sets to individuals or teams; custom organization roles require GitHub Enterprise Cloud. | Organization and project roles (admin, contributor, viewer) with a published permissions matrix; roles can also be assigned to groups. |
| Private networking / VPC | GitHub-hosted larger runners (2-64 vCPU Ubuntu and Windows) can run in a customer Azure VNET subnet; standard GitHub-hosted runners are not supported. | Site-to-site connectivity, an encrypted tunnel from cloud jobs to resources behind your firewall, is in preview on the Scale plan. |
| Dedicated infrastructure | GitHub-hosted runners are shared across all GitHub customers; private networking configures hosted runners to be used exclusively for your private network. | Server plan runs CircleCI on-prem or in your private cloud behind your firewall, with an air-gapped install option. |
Where they differ.
What the free plan includes
- GitHub Actions
- A per-plan quota of minutes, artifact storage and cache for private repositories, resetting each billing cycle. Minutes on public repositories are free with no quota.
- CircleCI
- 30,000 credits a month for 5 active users; extra users are $15 each.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About billing for GitHub Actions ↗
“Minutes: Your free minutes reset to the full amount at the start of each billing cycle. [...] Public repositories: Minutes remain free.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- CircleCI Pricing ↗
“30,000 credits included free 5 active users add additional users for $15/month.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Entry paid plan
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub Team: $4 USD per user/month (Free $0, Enterprise $21 USD per user/month).
- CircleCI
- Performance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Pricing · Plans for every developer · GitHub ↗
“$0 USD per user/month $4 USD per user/month $21 USD per user/month”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- CircleCI Pricing ↗
“Starting at $15 /month. 30,000 credits included free.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- GitHub Actions
- Per-minute billing beyond the included allowance: $0.006/minute (Linux), $0.010/minute (Windows), $0.062/minute (macOS). Artifact storage overage $0.25/GB-month; cache storage overage $0.07/GB-month.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About billing for GitHub Actions ↗
“Linux: $0.006 USD/minute. Windows: $0.010 USD/minute. macOS: $0.062 USD/minute. Shared storage: $0.25 USD per GB/month. Cache storage: $0.07 USD per GB/month.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
Build allowance
2,000 minutes/month on GitHub Free; 3,000 on Pro and Team; 50,000 on Enterprise Cloud.
Up to 6,000 build minutes per month on the free plan, measured on a small Docker resource class (30,000 free credits/month).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GitHub Actions billing - GitHub Docs ↗
“Plan Artifact storage Minutes (per month) Cache storage (per repository) Custom image storage GitHub Free 500 MB 2,000 10 GB Not applicable GitHub Pro 1 GB 3,000 10 GB Not applicable GitHub Free for organizations 500 MB 2,000 10 GB Not applicable GitHub Team 2 GB 3,000 10 GB 75 GB GitHub Enterprise Cloud 50 GB 50,000 10 GB 150 GB”
Read 2026-09-27 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing - CircleCI ↗
“up to 6,000 build minutes Number of build minutes when using a small docker resource class [...] 30,000 free credits/month”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Concurrent builds
Total concurrent jobs on standard GitHub-hosted runners: 20 on Free, 40 Pro, 60 Team, 500 Enterprise; 1,000 on larger runners (Team and Enterprise). GitHub Support can increase these on request.
30 concurrent job runs on Free, 80 on Performance, unlimited on Scale; macOS VM concurrency is 1 / 15 / custom.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Actions limits - GitHub Docs ↗
“Standard GitHub-hosted runner Free 20 5 Not applicable Standard GitHub-hosted runner Pro 40 5 Not applicable Standard GitHub-hosted runner Team 60 5 Not applicable Standard GitHub-hosted runner Enterprise 500 50 Not applicable [...] Larger runner Team 1000 5 100 Larger runner Enterprise 1000 50 100”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing - CircleCI ↗
“jobs that run simultaneously, without queuing. 30 80 unlimited [...] macOS VM 1 15 custom”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Regions
- GitHub Actions
- Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted larger runners is supported in 25 Azure regions on GitHub.com, including EastUs, NorthEurope, UkSouth, AustraliaEast and JapanWest; runners deploy in the same region as your subnet. Region choice applies only to larger runners with Azure private networking, not standard hosted runners.
- CircleCI
- Cloud jobs run on AWS (us-east-1, us-east-2), GCP (us-east1, us-central1) and CircleCI's own macOS cloud.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted runners in your organization - GitHub Docs ↗
“The following regions are supported on GitHub.com. AustraliaEast BrazilSouth CanadaCentral CanadaEast CentralUs EastAsia EastUs EastUs2 FranceCentral GermanyWestCentral JapanWest KoreaCentral NorthCentralUs NorthEurope NorwayEast SouthCentralUs SoutheastAsia SouthIndia SwedenCentral SwitzerlandNorth UkSouth UkWest WestUs WestUs2 WestUs3”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
Max job duration
Up to 6 hours of execution time per job on GitHub-hosted runners. A job that exceeds this is terminated and fails.
Maximum job runtime is 1 hour on the Free plan, 3 hours on Performance and 5 hours on Scale.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GitHub Actions limits ↗
“Each job in a workflow can run for up to 6 hours of execution time. If a job reaches this limit, the job is terminated and fails.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official docs · Report a correction
- Updates to maximum duration of jobs | CircleCI Help Center ↗
“As part of the changes to our pricing plans, jobs will have their maximum runtime durations updated to the following: [...] 1 hour (for free plan) 3 hours (for performance plan) 5 hours (for scale plan)”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Self-hosted runners
- GitHub Actions
- Free for self-hosted runners — no usage charges beyond the runner's own infrastructure cost.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About billing for GitHub Actions ↗
“GitHub Actions usage is free for self-hosted runners and for public repositories that use standard GitHub-hosted runners.”
Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
SOC 2
- GitHub Actions
- SOC 1, Type 2 and SOC 2, Type 2 reports are downloadable by enterprise owners from GitHub Enterprise Cloud compliance settings.
- CircleCI
- SOC 2 Type II compliant.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Accessing compliance reports for your enterprise - GitHub Enterprise Cloud Docs ↗
“Enterprise owners can access compliance reports for the enterprise. [...] SOC 1, Type 2 SOC 2, Type 2 Cloud Security Alliance CAIQ self-assessment (CSA CAIQ - Level 1)”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
GDPR / data residency
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency stores enterprise data in a chosen region - EU, Australia, US or Japan; GitHub.com defaults to the USA.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency - GitHub Enterprise Cloud Docs ↗
“By default, GitHub stores data for GitHub.com in the USA. [...] The available regions are: EU (includes Azure regions in EFTA countries, currently Norway and Switzerland) Australia US Japan”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
PCI DSS
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance is downloadable by enterprise owners from GitHub Enterprise Cloud compliance settings.
- CircleCI
- Card payments run through Stripe's own PCI compliance — not a direct PCI-DSS certification of CircleCI's own platform.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Accessing compliance reports for your enterprise - GitHub Enterprise Cloud Docs ↗
“GitHub.com Services Continuity and Incident Management Plan GitHub PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Security — CircleCI ↗
“CircleCI leverages the PCI compliance of Stripe.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- GitHub Actions
- Storage disks for GitHub-hosted runners are encrypted at rest; all communications to GitHub are encrypted. Stated in GitHub's own April 2025 CI/CD blog post, not in a compliance report.
- CircleCI
- Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit; source code is not encrypted at rest, secured behind DMZ, bastion hosts and firewalls.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- When to choose GitHub-Hosted runners or self-hosted runners with GitHub Actions - The GitHub Blog ↗
“Storage disks for hosted runners are encrypted at rest, ensuring the code is protected on the disk. All communications are encrypted to GitHub”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- 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
Customer-managed keys
- GitHub Actions
- Not supported for Actions blob storage on GitHub Enterprise Server with Google Cloud Storage: the bucket must use Google-managed encryption keys. Scope: Actions blob storage on GitHub Enterprise Server with Google Cloud Storage.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Enabling GitHub Actions with Google Cloud Storage - GitHub Enterprise Server 3.22 Docs ↗
“The GCS bucket used for GitHub Actions blob storage must use Google-managed encryption keys. Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) are not currently supported”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
Role-based access control
- GitHub Actions
- Predefined and custom organization roles grant permission sets to individuals or teams; custom organization roles require GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
- CircleCI
- Organization and project roles (admin, contributor, viewer) with a published permissions matrix; roles can also be assigned to groups.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Roles in an organization - GitHub Docs ↗
“Organization owners can assign roles to individuals and teams giving them different sets of permissions in the organization. [...] This feature is only available to organizations on GitHub Enterprise Cloud.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
Private networking / VPC
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub-hosted larger runners (2-64 vCPU Ubuntu and Windows) can run in a customer Azure VNET subnet; standard GitHub-hosted runners are not supported.
- CircleCI
- Site-to-site connectivity, an encrypted tunnel from cloud jobs to resources behind your firewall, is in preview on the Scale plan.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- About Azure private networking for GitHub-hosted runners in your organization - GitHub Docs ↗
“Azure VNET private networking is only available for larger runners (2-64 vCPU Ubuntu and Windows). Standard GitHub-hosted runners are not supported.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Site-to-site connectivity - CircleCI Docs ↗
“Site-to-site connectivity is available in preview on CircleCI Scale plan [...] Site-to-site connectivity lets CircleCI cloud jobs securely reach resources behind your firewall”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Dedicated infrastructure
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub-hosted runners are shared across all GitHub customers; private networking configures hosted runners to be used exclusively for your private network.
- CircleCI
- Server plan runs CircleCI on-prem or in your private cloud behind your firewall, with an air-gapped install option.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Private networking with GitHub-hosted runners - GitHub Docs ↗
“GitHub-hosted runners are shared across all GitHub customers. However with private networking, you can configure hosted runners to be exclusively used to connect to your private network and resources while they are running your workflows.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- 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
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: GitHub Actions or CircleCI?
GitHub Actions: GitHub Team: $4 USD per user/month (Free $0, Enterprise $21 USD per user/month).
CircleCI: Performance plan: starting at $15/month, including 30,000 free credits plus additional paid credits.
Should I choose GitHub Actions or CircleCI?
Pick GitHub Actions if Repos already on GitHub — no separate CI product to wire up, and self-hosted runners cost nothing to use beyond the hardware itself.
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.
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