The best CI/CD services, according to hackers
20 CI/CD services were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 5 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended CI/CD services with the badge. Each figure is 5 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Preferred over GitHub Actions
Developers recommend GitLab CI for its readable job and stage model, reusable templates, and easier handling of complex pipelines. Common caveat: pipelines are hard to run and debug locally.
Simple to set up and maintain
Simple, lightweight self-hosted CI server that people pair with Gitea or Forgejo for small setups. Common caveat: it is missing some features people expect coming from GitHub and can be finicky to debug.
Dynamic pipelines are very useful
People recommend it for dynamic pipelines, flexible hosting and less maintenance than Jenkins. The common caveat is the per-seat price.
All 20 CI/CD services, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GitHub Actions | 234 | 741 | 24% | 12 | 2 yrs21 owners | — |
| 2 | Jenkins | 67 | 57 | 54% | 9 | — | — |
| 3 | GitLab CI | 56 | 25 | 69% | 11 | 3 yrs9 owners | Approved |
| 4 | Dagger | 43 | 23 | 65% | 10 | — | — |
| 5 | Woodpecker CI | 37 | 3 | 93% | 10 | — | Approved |
| 6 | Buildkite | 33 | 7 | 83% | 7 | — | Approved |
| 7 | Azure DevOps | 24 | 54 | 31% | 10 | — | — |
| 8 | CircleCI | 18 | 17 | 51% | 6 | — | — |
| Tied 9 | Depot CI | 15 | 2 | 88% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Tied 9 | Forgejo Actions | 15 | 1 | 94% | 7 | — | Approved |
| 11 | Cirrus CI | 10 | 6 | 63% | 1 | — | — |
| Tied 12 | Drone CI | 9 | 2 | 82% | 7 | — | — |
| Tied 12 | JetBrains TeamCity | 9 | 6 | 60% | 6 | — | — |
| 14 | RWX CI platform | 8 | 1 | 89% | 7 | — | — |
| 15 | Gitea Actions | 7 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| 16 | Azure Pipelines | 6 | 9 | 40% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 17 | CrowCI | 5 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| Tied 17 | Open Build Service | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 17 | SourceHut builds.sr.ht | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
| Tied 17 | Xcode Cloud | 5 | 4 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same CI/CD service in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to CI/CD services that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
Rankings are never for sale. We may earn a commission when you buy through our links. It never changes the order.