The best Cirrus CI alternatives, compared honestly
Cirrus CI has shut down: the Cirrus Labs team joined OpenAI and the service stopped running jobs on June 1, 2026, so every .cirrus.yml has to move somewhere. Cirrus billed pure usage with no seat fees (a 2-vCPU Linux minute cost $0.006), and most replacements add seat or plan fees on top of compute, so the bill usually goes up. Below is what each alternative costs at three Linux workloads and one Apple Silicon macOS workload, next to Cirrus's last list price, and where each .cirrus.yml key goes.
Cirrus CI stopped running jobs on Monday, June 1, 2026. Announced April 7, 2026, when Cirrus Labs joined OpenAI's Agent Infrastructure team. Cirrus Runners takes no new customers (existing contracts run to term). Tart, Vetu and Orchard moved to the openai GitHub org and were relicensed on June 5, 2026 under FSL-1.1-ALv2, with no licensing fees. As of November 5, 2026 the cirrus-ci.org domain no longer resolves. Source: Cirrus Labs announcement.
The best Cirrus CI replacement depends on what you're moving:
- Code on GitHub → GitHub Actions: $0 at 2,000 Linux minutes and $108/month at 20,000, the only hosted option in our table below Cirrus's old $120.
- Pure per-minute billing like Cirrus → Semaphore: no seat fee, $0.0075 per 2-vCPU minute, $135/month at 20,000 minutes.
- Closest config port → CircleCI: tasks, caches and dependencies map almost one to one, $180/month at 20,000 minutes.
- Apple Silicon macOS or FreeBSD → GitHub Actions with self-hosted Tart runners or a FreeBSD VM inside a Linux job; Bitrise Starter ($99/month) if you want hosted Macs with unlimited minutes.
Cost at real volumes
What your Cirrus CI workload costs elsewhere, per month
Three Linux workloads priced on each tool's 2-vCPU Linux machine at the cheapest plan that fits, plus 2,000 minutes of Apple Silicon macOS, the workload Cirrus was known for. The first row is Cirrus CI's own last list price, for comparison only: it is no longer sold. All figures are USD per month before tax.
| Tool | Billing unit | Small: 2,000 Linux min · 5 users · 2 concurrent | Medium: 20,000 Linux min · 10 users · 5 concurrent | Large: 100,000 Linux min · 25 users · 10 concurrent | macOS: 2,000 Apple Silicon min · 5 users |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cirrus CI (shut down June 1, 2026; last list price) | Compute credits at $1 each: Linux 3 credits per 1,000 vCPU-min; Apple Silicon 15 per 1,000 CPU-min, macOS tasks always 4 CPU; no seat fees | $12/mo 2,000 × 2 vCPU × $0.003 |
$120/mo 20,000 × 2 vCPU × $0.003 |
$600/mo 100,000 × 2 vCPU × $0.003 |
$120/mo 2,000 × 4 CPU × $0.015 |
| GitHub Actions | Per minute: Linux 2-core $0.006, macOS $0.062; Free includes $12/mo of usage (2,000 Linux 2-core min) | $0/mo Free: $12 included covers it |
$108/mo Free + 18,000 × $0.006 |
$588/mo Free + 98,000 × $0.006 |
$112/mo 2,000 × $0.062 = $124, minus $12 included |
| CircleCI | Credits: Docker Medium (2 CPU, 4 GB) 10/min, macOS M4 Pro Medium 200/min; $15 per 25,000 credits; 25,000 credits per user beyond 5 | $0/mo Free: 20,000 of 30,000 credits |
$180/mo Performance: 200,000 + 5 extra users × 25,000, minus 30,000 included = 12 blocks × $15 |
$885/mo Performance: 1,000,000 + 20 × 25,000, minus 30,000 = 59 blocks × $15 |
$225/mo Performance: 400,000 credits minus 30,000 = 15 blocks × $15 |
| GitLab CI/CD | Per seat + compute minutes: small Linux cost factor 1, macOS M1 medium factor 6 (beta, Premium+); $10 per 1,000 extra min | $20/mo Free (max 5 users): 400 included + 2 packs × $10 |
$390/mo Premium 10 × $29/user (billed annually) + 10 packs × $10 |
$1,625/mo Premium 25 × $29/user (billed annually) + 90 packs × $10 |
$165/mo Premium 5 × $29 + (12,000 − 10,000 included) = 2 packs × $10 |
| Buddy | Plan + seats + usage: $0.00024 per CPU-minute and per GB-minute; 2 vCPU + 4 GB = $0.00144/min; macOS VM bills GB-minutes at 6× | $111.88/mo Pro $29 + 4 seats × $20 + 2,000 × $0.00144 |
$252.80/mo Pro $29 + 9 × $20 + 3 concurrents × $5 + $28.80 usage |
$693/mo Pro $29 + 24 × $20 + 8 concurrents × $5 + $144 usage |
Not priced: we found no published macOS VM size to apply the 6× rate to |
| Semaphore | Per minute, no seat fee: Ubuntu x64 2 vCPU $0.0075, macOS 4 vCPU $0.09; $15 free credits/mo; 20 concurrent jobs by default | $0/mo 2,000 × $0.0075 = $15, covered by free credits |
$135/mo 20,000 × $0.0075 − $15 |
$735/mo 100,000 × $0.0075 − $15 |
$165/mo 2,000 × $0.09 − $15 |
| Bitrise | Plan by build count, not minutes: Starter $99/mo billed monthly (unlimited usage, up to 4 concurrent, 3 private apps, recommended up to 100 builds/mo); Pro from $218/mo billed monthly (250 builds/mo) | $99/mo Starter, if you stay near 100 builds a month |
From $218/mo Pro (5 concurrent is over Starter's 4), 250 builds/mo |
Not published: Pro tiers above 250 builds/mo are not listed | $99/mo Starter includes macOS Medium machines, unlimited usage |
| Actions + Tart (self-hosted) | GitHub charges no fee for self-hosted runners; Tart has no licensing fee | $0 platform fee plus your machines and upkeep (not priced) |
$0 platform fee plus your machines and upkeep (not priced) |
$0 platform fee plus your machines and upkeep (not priced) |
$0 platform fee plus your Macs and upkeep (not priced) |
Formula: plan or seat fees + (build minutes beyond the included allowance × the 2-vCPU Linux or the macOS rate), rounded up to each vendor's purchase unit (CircleCI 25,000-credit blocks, GitLab 1,000-minute packs). Concurrency is priced only where the vendor charges for it (Buddy extra concurrents, Bitrise plan limits). Each column is priced on its own, so the macOS column does not share an allowance with a Linux workload. Excluded: storage, egress, caching add-ons, larger machines, annual-commit discounts, promotions and tax. Cirrus CI rates come from its pricing and FAQ pages as archived in April 2026, because cirrus-ci.org is offline. Buddy's own page lists the plan as €29; it bills EUR and USD at 1:1.
Sources, checked 2026-11-05: Cirrus Labs announcement · Cirrus CI pricing (archived 2026-04-19) · Cirrus CI FAQ (archived 2026-04-17) · GitHub plans · GitHub Actions runner pricing · CircleCI pricing · CircleCI credit price list · GitLab pricing · GitLab cost factors · Buddy pricing · Semaphore pricing · Bitrise pricing · Tart
The shortlist
7 places to move your Cirrus CI pipelines
Ranked for teams moving off Cirrus CI: each pick lists a genuine strength and an honest weakness, and which ones handle the macOS and FreeBSD workloads Cirrus was known for.
The most common landing spot for Cirrus users on GitHub: a large marketplace of reusable actions, free standard runners on public repos, and hosted Linux, Windows and macOS runners. At 20,000 Linux minutes it is the one hosted option in our table that costs less than Cirrus did ($108 vs $120 a month). Weakness: macOS minutes cost $0.062, about the same as Cirrus's Apple Silicon rate, and there is no hosted FreeBSD.
Its YAML model is the least surprising translation of .cirrus.yml: jobs, workflows with requires, checksum-keyed caches, and Docker, Arm, Windows and M4 Pro macOS resource classes. Weakness: credit pricing needs forecasting, every user beyond five costs 25,000 credits a month, and macOS is the priciest in our table at $225 for 2,000 minutes.
SCM, CI/CD, security scanning and a container registry in one platform, and the GitLab Runner also ships a FreeBSD build for your own machines. Weakness: only 400 free compute minutes a month, Premium at $29/user/month (billed annually) makes it the most expensive at 25 users, and hosted macOS runners are still beta and Premium-only.
Managed CI/CD with a visual pipeline editor (or YAML) and prebuilt actions that builds your app and deploys it to any host. Free plan with a $1/month usage credit; Pro $29/month plus seats and metered usage. Weakness: no FreeBSD, macOS runs as a VM action at a 6× usage multiplier, there is no .cirrus.yml importer, and seat fees make it cost more than Cirrus at every Linux volume we priced.
The closest billing model to Cirrus: you pay per minute ($0.0075 for 2 vCPU Linux, $0.09 for 4 vCPU macOS) with no per-user fee and $15 of free credits a month, on any Git host. Weakness: a smaller integrations catalog, no hosted FreeBSD, and Linux minutes still cost about 25% more than Cirrus charged.
Mobile-first CI/CD with strong iOS and Android tooling. Paid plans are no longer metered by minutes: Starter is $99/month billed monthly with unlimited usage on macOS or Linux Medium machines and up to 4 concurrent builds. Weakness: priced by build count and private apps, so it's a poor fit for a general Linux pipeline, and Pro prices above 250 builds a month aren't published.
For Cirrus's specialty: run ephemeral macOS VMs with Tart on your own Macs behind GitHub Actions self-hosted runners, which GitHub doesn't charge for. Tart has no licensing fee since the June 2026 relicense, but its FSL license still bars offering it as a competing commercial service until each release turns Apache 2.0 two years later. Weakness: you own the hardware and its upkeep.
Migration map
Where each part of your .cirrus.yml goes
The Cirrus CI keys you will touch in a move, and their equivalent in the five alternatives Cirrus users shortlist most. There is no importer for .cirrus.yml on any of them, so this is a rewrite; your scripts carry over unchanged.
| Cirrus CI | GitHub Actions | CircleCI | GitLab CI/CD | Buddy | Semaphore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.cirrus.yml / .cirrus.star |
.github/workflows/*.yml |
.circleci/config.yml |
.gitlab-ci.yml |
Visual editor, or YAML in the app or in .buddy/ in the repo |
.semaphore/semaphore.yml |
task: with *_script: |
Job with run: steps |
Job with run: steps |
Job with script: |
Actions in a pipeline | Block with jobs and commands: |
depends_on: |
needs: |
Workflow requires: |
stages: and needs: |
Action order plus trigger conditions | Block dependencies: |
container: / arm_container: |
runs-on: plus container: |
docker: executor and resource_class: |
image: plus runner tags: |
Docker image per action | agent: machine type plus containers: |
macos_instance: |
runs-on: macos-* or a self-hosted Tart runner |
macos: executor with an M4 Pro resource class |
Hosted macOS runner tags (beta, Premium+) | macOS VM action | agent: with a macOS machine type |
*_cache: with fingerprint_script |
actions/cache keyed on hashFiles() |
save_cache / restore_cache with checksum |
cache: with key: files: |
Pipeline cache (1 GB on Free) | cache store / cache restore |
env: and ENCRYPTED[...] |
Repository, organization and environment secrets | Contexts and project environment variables | CI/CD variables (masked, protected) | Encrypted variables | Secrets attached to a block |
only_if: / skip: |
on: triggers and if: |
Workflow filters and when |
rules: |
Trigger conditions | run: when: conditions |
FreeBSD has no hosted equivalent on any of these. The realistic routes are the GitLab Runner FreeBSD build on your own machine, or a community action such as vmactions/freebsd-vm that boots FreeBSD in a VM inside a GitHub Actions job. ENCRYPTED[...] values can't be decrypted out of Cirrus, so issue fresh credentials on the new platform. The open-source Cirrus CLI (MIT) still runs container tasks from a .cirrus.yml on your own machine, which helps you compare output while you port. The step-by-step version is in the Cirrus CI migration guide.
Method
How we checked
On 5 November 2026 we fetched each vendor's pricing page plus the docs page that holds its per-minute rate (GitHub's runner pricing, CircleCI's credit price list, GitLab's cost factors), and re-read the Cirrus Labs announcement and the openai/tart license file. cirrus-ci.org no longer resolves, so Cirrus CI's last rates come from Internet Archive snapshots of its pricing (April 19, 2026) and FAQ (April 17, 2026) pages. Every total is arithmetic on list prices at the cheapest plan that fits, with the formula in the cell; taxes, promotions, annual-commit discounts, storage and egress are left out.
Common questions
Cirrus CI alternatives: common questions
Is Cirrus CI shut down?
Yes. On April 7, 2026 Cirrus Labs announced its team was joining OpenAI's Agent Infrastructure group, and Cirrus CI shut down effective Monday, June 1, 2026. .cirrus.yml workflows no longer run, and as of November 5, 2026 the cirrus-ci.org domain no longer resolves, so every Cirrus CI user has to move to another CI/CD platform.
What is the cheapest Cirrus CI alternative?
For Linux builds on GitHub, GitHub Actions: $0 at 2,000 minutes a month and $108 at 20,000, the only hosted option we priced that comes in under Cirrus's old $120 at that volume. Semaphore ($135 at 20,000 minutes) is the cheapest that works with any Git host and charges no per-user fee. For 2,000 Apple Silicon macOS minutes, Bitrise Starter ($99 a month, unlimited usage) and GitHub Actions ($112) are the lowest hosted options; self-hosted Tart runners on your own Macs have no platform or license fee.
How much did Cirrus CI cost?
Cirrus CI sold compute credits at $1 each and billed per second, with no seat fees: 3 credits per 1,000 minutes of one Linux or FreeBSD vCPU, 4 for Windows and 15 per 1,000 minutes of one Apple Silicon CPU, and macOS tasks always used 4 CPUs. That made a 2-vCPU Linux minute $0.006 and a macOS minute $0.06. Public repositories got free usage up to 50 credits a month. Most replacements add seat or plan fees on top of compute, so the same workload usually costs more.
What happens to my .cirrus.yml configuration?
It no longer runs on Cirrus CI, and no alternative imports it, so you rewrite it for the new platform. Your scripts and Docker images carry over; the work is remapping tasks, depends_on, caches, instance types and encrypted variables, as in the migration map above. The open-source Cirrus CLI can still run container tasks from the file on your own machine while you port.
What replaces Cirrus Runners and Apple Silicon macOS builds?
Cirrus Runners takes no new customers; existing customers are supported until their contracts end. For Apple Silicon macOS, use hosted macOS runners on GitHub Actions ($0.062 a minute), CircleCI (M4 Pro, 200 credits a minute), Semaphore ($0.09 a minute) or Bitrise (Starter $99 a month), or self-host ephemeral macOS VMs with Tart on your own Macs behind GitHub Actions self-hosted runners.
Is Tart still free to use?
Yes, with one limit. Cirrus Labs stopped charging licensing fees, and on June 5, 2026 Tart was relicensed under the Functional Source License (FSL-1.1-ALv2) in the openai/tart repository. You can use it for your own CI, but not to offer a competing commercial service; each release becomes Apache 2.0 two years after it ships. Vetu and Orchard moved to the openai organization under the same license.