CircleCI cloud plans are three tiers of the same hosted service, Free, Performance and Scale. All three are paid for in credits. CircleCI says credits “are the unit of compute consumption”, that they “are consumed by the second at varying rates per minute”, and that larger machine types consume credits at a higher rate.[1] The pricing page adds that credits are “purchased up-front” and “used to pay for CircleCI platform usage in real time”, and that platform usage has four parts: monthly active users, compute time, add-on features, and network and storage beyond plan thresholds.[2]
Editions
| Feature | Free | Performance | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | USD 0 per month[2] | From USD 15 per month[2] | Billed annually, quoted on request[2] |
| Included credits | 30,000 per month[4] | 30,000 per month plus purchased credits[2] | Custom[2] |
| Included active users | 5[2] | 5; extra users at USD 15 per month[2] | Custom[2] |
| Concurrency (Docker, Linux, Arm, Windows) | 30[2] | 80[2] | Unlimited[2] |
| macOS concurrency | 1[2] | 15[2] | Custom[2] |
| Flaky test detection | Limited to 5 tests[1] | Unlimited[1] | Unlimited[1] |
| Support | Community forum[1] | Standard support through SLAs; 8x5 add-on[1][2] | Premium support; 8x5 and 24x7 add-ons[1][2] |
The plans overview lists further differences. Performance adds larger resource classes, IP ranges, organization-level custom storage retention and an unregistered-user spend block. Scale adds every resource class including GPUs, unlimited self-hosted runners, single sign-on, config policies, audit log streaming, budget controls and a site-to-site connectivity preview.[1] Config policies are also offered with CircleCI Server from v4.2.[8] Catalog rows: Free plan, Performance plan, Scale plan and Support packages. The rule that places SSO and config policies on Scale has its own evidence row.
Metrics
The central unit is the Credit. Its value on Performance follows from the package price: credits are “sold in packages of 25,000 at $15 each (not including applicable taxes)”, and the documentation prices them at USD 0.0006 each.[4] CircleCI converts credits to minutes by dividing by the rate; its example is that “30,000 credits at a rate of 10 credits per min (using Linux Medium) is 3,000 minutes”.[2]
Compute is priced per resource class in credits per minute. The price list updated on 2026-08-31 gives, among others, the following rates.[3]
| Environment | Size and rate (credits per minute) |
|---|---|
| (x86) Docker | Small 5; Medium 10; Medium+ 15; Large 20; X-large 40; 2 X-large 80; 2 X-large+ 100 |
| (x86) Docker (Gen 2) | Small 6; Medium 12; Medium+ 18; Large 24; X-large 48; 2 X-large 96; 2 X-large+ 120 |
| (Arm) Docker | Medium 13; Large 26; X-large 52; 2 X-large 104 |
| Linux VM (x86) | Medium 10; Large 20; X-large 100; 2 X-large 200; 2 X-large+ 300 |
| Arm VM (Linux) | Medium 10; Large 20; X-large 100; 2 X-large 200 |
| Windows VM | Medium 40; Large 120; X-large 210; 2 X-large 500 |
| macOS VM | M4 Pro Medium 200; M4 Pro Large 400 |
| GPU | From 160 (small Nvidia Tesla P4) to 1,000 (large Nvidia Tesla V100) |
Which classes a plan can use is also a licensing fact. On the pricing page, Docker X-large and the two macOS classes start at Performance, while 2 X-large Docker and every GPU class are Scale only.[2] Rows such as Credits per minute differ by execution environment and size carry the evidence.
Add-ons and non-compute charges are in credits as well. The price list shows Docker layer caching at 200 credits per job, IP ranges at 450 credits per GB, runner network egress at 420 credits per GB, storage at 420 credits per GB, and users at 25,000 credits per month on Performance and 40,000 on Scale.[3] These are covered in CircleCI self-hosted runners and usage charges and CircleCI active users and seats. The Chunk AI agent is in beta with “no extra costs”, but it “uses CircleCI credits and your AI model provider tokens” and “will be a paid feature when generally available”.[9]
Counting / floors
Rounding. A job that runs for less than a minute is not billed as a full minute. CircleCI states it first rounds “up to the nearest second, and then up to the nearest credit”.[4] Jobs that are only “queued” or “preparing” are not charged.[4]
Buying credits. On the monthly option, the package selected is charged at the start of each billing month and credits are bought in blocks of 25,000.[2][4] Paid credits roll over month to month and expire after a year, whereas the 30,000 credits included with Free and Performance expire monthly.[2][4] Unused credits are forfeited if the subscription is cancelled.[4]
Running out. The three plans behave differently when the balance reaches zero.
- On Free, personal builds are blocked until the credits refill at the start of the next month. Open source builds are not subject to the block.[4]
- On Performance, the account is refilled by about 25% of the credit subscription with a minimum of 25,000 credits. With a monthly purchase of 200,000 credits, the refill is 50,000. Refills during the month are paid when they occur.[2][4] See Performance plan automatic refill.
- On Scale, customers may agree to credit auto-refill (CAR). A notice is sent when usage reaches 20% of the purchase remaining and a refill of 25% (default) or 10% is made at 10%. If CAR is declined, there is no notice and service is interrupted at zero credits until another purchase is made.[4] See Scale plan credit auto-refill.
Prepaid billing. Performance customers can switch to prepaid billing, which lets them “purchase credits in bulk, pay upfront” and obtain volume discounts. The pricing page quotes 1 million credits for USD 600 and 5 million for USD 3,000, with discounts starting at 5 million.[2][4] Prepaid customers still receive 30,000 credits and 5 free seats a month.[4] The row is Prepaid billing.
Fixed-date allocation. An order may spread credits over scheduled allocations, for example semi-annually. The purchase “is divided equally between credit allocations”. If CAR is not enabled, builds are blocked after exhaustion until the next allocation date.[4] See Fixed-date credit allocation.
Concurrency. Concurrent job runs are jobs that “run simultaneously, without queuing”.[2] Beyond the plan limits, CircleCI applies “soft concurrency limits” per resource class, and customers on annual plans can ask for an increase “at no extra charge”.[5] On Scale, unlimited concurrency applies, with macOS the exception.[1]
Budgets. Scale organizations can set weekly credit budgets for the organization or for single projects. Budgets run Monday 00:00:00 to Sunday 23:59:59 UTC and track compute, Docker layer caching, storage, IP ranges, network and AI agent usage, but exclude user seat charges.[6] See Budget controls.
Virtualization & partitioning
There is no processor or core metric on the cloud plans. A larger resource class costs more credits per minute but is not a licensed object, and parallelism is only a way to split one job across several machines: two executors that each run for 1,250 minutes still total 2,500 minutes of usage.[4] The virtualization and partitioning article explains why this differs from capacity metrics used by other vendors.
Cloud / BYOL
All three plans are hosted by CircleCI. Customers who need to run jobs on their own infrastructure use self-hosted runners, which are on every plan with different concurrency limits, or CircleCI Server.[1]
Programs
- Plan sharing and transfer. On non-free plans an organization can share its plan with free organizations it administers; “child organizations will bill all credits and other usage to the parent org”. Transferring a paid plan leaves the sender on the Free plan.[4]
- Credit refill and prepayment programs. The refill, prepaid and fixed-date allocation programs above.
- Open source credit allowance and Startup program. Covered in CircleCI terms, open source and programs.
Audits and compliance
Credit consumption is measured by CircleCI and exposed on the Plan Usage pages of the web app, which list active users and break down network, storage and IP ranges usage.[4] The SaaS Agreement says Credits “are not returnable or refundable” and that fees for overages “are charged in arrears”.[7] Reconciliation should compare the Plan Usage totals with invoices, the active user list and the credit price list in force at the time, and note that CircleCI reserves the right to sunset any part of the Services, with information on available Services provided at renewal.[7]
Out of scope
- Scale plan prices, credit volumes and support package prices, which CircleCI does not publish.
- Negotiated enterprise terms, and amounts agreed through resellers or marketplaces.
- Costs on third-party platforms that CircleCI jobs consume, such as container registries and cloud services.