CircleCI
Ranked 8 of 20 CI/CD services by recommenders
Hosted CI/CD service that people recommend as mature and dependable, with SSH debugging and a free plan. Critics cite slow caching, charges tied to concurrent runs, and recurring outages.
Hosted CI/CD service that people recommend as mature and dependable, with SSH debugging and a free plan. Critics cite slow caching, charges tied to concurrent runs, and recurring outages.
35 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 51%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Mature, dependable, long-running product
“A big effort and investment went into resolving those outage issues you're referring to. Results have been stellar for a while now.”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “HashiCorp co-founder says GitHub 'no longer a place for serious work'” “There is a reason that f.e. CircleCI is doing fully focused CI/CD for 10+ years and is still going strong.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “something dependable that gets the job done and helps you to focus on what really matters”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?” - Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst”
- Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Launch a Debugging Terminal into GitHub Actions”
- Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?”
- Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Another GitHub outage in the same day”
Debug with SSH feature
“"Debug with SSH" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?” “Debug with SSH(1) is still one of our (CircleCI) most loved and praised features.”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” “I do remember liking the feature where you could enter the console of the CI job”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” - Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Launch a Debugging Terminal into GitHub Actions”
Easier and faster than alternatives
“CircleCI is typically faster (and more consistent) than GH Actions”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “I Hate GitHub Actions with Passion” “they've all been such an improvement over Jenkins”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “all of them were so easy in comparison”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow, coarse-grained caching
“caching is still very primitive and coarse-grained”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst” “at some point CircleCI was so slow at saving+restoring cache that it was actually faster to just download all the deps”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js” Pricing tied to concurrent runs
“It's not obfuscated. The free plan gives you a max of 5 concurrent self-hosted runners.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “CircleCI charges for concurrent job runs (which include self-hosted runs), no?”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “mostly because of HOW they charge, it would be $3000”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” Recurring outages and reliability issues
“I am now _required_ to consult status page of github, circleci or MS services”
Comment from 16 Sep 2026 in “Can we stop with the uptime percentages?” “CircleCI has been this bad for 10+ years and they’re still in business.”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “HashiCorp co-founder says GitHub 'no longer a place for serious work'” “circleci's semi-regular (but thankfully short) outages”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “HashiCorp co-founder says GitHub 'no longer a place for serious work'” Botched generalist migration, weaker than rivals
“CircleCI botched the migration from the specialist to generalist model”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” “it is absolutely not better than GitHub Actions”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst”
Other CI/CD services people recommend
The four most recommended other CI/CD services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Actions | 234 | 741 | 24% | 12 | 2 yrs21 owners | — |
| Jenkins | 67 | 57 | 54% | 9 | — | — |
| GitLab CI | 56 | 25 | 69% | 11 | 3 yrs9 owners | Approved |
| Dagger | 43 | 23 | 65% | 10 | — | — |
| CircleCIThis page | 18 | 17 | 51% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“same reason I have no interest in Circle CI”
“I am now _required_ to consult status page of github, circleci or MS services”
“A big effort and investment went into resolving those outage issues you're referring to. Results have been stellar for a while now.”
“CircleCI has been this bad for 10+ years and they’re still in business.”
“circleci's semi-regular (but thankfully short) outages”
“FT.com used to deploy either directly through heroku to prod, or later via circleCI, and that was in 2015.”
“Debug with SSH(1) is still one of our (CircleCI) most loved and praised features.”
“something dependable that gets the job done and helps you to focus on what really matters”
“I think we (CircleCI) are doing quite well”
“"Debug with SSH" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past”
“They're one of the most mature in the space.”
“CircleCI has worked for me”
“I do remember liking the feature where you could enter the console of the CI job”
“CircleCI botched the migration from the specialist to generalist model”
“CircleCI 2.0's command expressions”
“CircleCI is typically faster (and more consistent) than GH Actions”
“Otherwise it works just as good as it ever did”
“CircleCI solved this anno 2011, with "Rebuild with SSH"”
“because of the amount of hours it saved thousands of developers”
“building react-native apps that use Expo in CircleCI”
“No, Github, Circle CI or Google Console and others.”
“Setup something like CircleCI that mainly relies on paid users of their main product, and has a free plan.”
“they've all been such an improvement over Jenkins”
“It happened with TravisCI, CircleCI, now it's happening with GitHub.”
“It's not obfuscated. The free plan gives you a max of 5 concurrent self-hosted runners.”
“all of them were so easy in comparison”
“CircleCI charges for concurrent job runs (which include self-hosted runs), no?”
“I liked using this product at another company I worked at”
“mostly because of HOW they charge, it would be $3000”
“There is a reason that f.e. CircleCI is doing fully focused CI/CD for 10+ years and is still going strong.”
“the morass of copy-pasted (and yes orbs) CircleCI yaml files”
“caching is still very primitive and coarse-grained”
“It feels much more like a complete product rather than a tacked on mess”
“ran into limitations on the claims they exposed”
“CircleCI made great steps the last few years, f.e. to better support proper DRY working”
“it is absolutely not better than GitHub Actions”
“at some point CircleCI was so slow at saving+restoring cache that it was actually faster to just download all the deps”
“what TravisCI/CircleCI had in their free tier before GH Actions made things so much easier”
“I had issues with CircleCI too earlier”
“Circle CI, when they announced their Japan office, put out a statement that was clearly written in English first, then translated without any effort of localization.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.