Drone CI
Shares rank 12 of 20 CI/CD services by recommenders
A simple, lightweight CI server that people find easy to run and use, and some say it is good for small teams. One critic reports an abrupt vendor change that left users to clean up.
A simple, lightweight CI server that people find easy to run and use, and some say it is good for small teams. One critic reports an abrupt vendor change that left users to clean up.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Simple and easy to set up
“It's a very good design; very simple, easy to run, easy to use”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab” “Very easy to stand up, does just fine.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Copilot code review will start consuming GitHub Actions minutes” “Now that's a dead simple CI system.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Advent of Sysadmin 2025” Lightweight and does the job
“seems to be another popular (and lightweight) alternative”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Advent of Sysadmin 2025” “Very easy to stand up, does just fine.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Copilot code review will start consuming GitHub Actions minutes” Liked by past and current users
“Personally my favorite is probably drone-ci.”
Comment from 6 May 2026 in “Show HN: Red Squares – GitHub outages as contributions” “I had good memories about droneci”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team”
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 | — | — |
| Drone CIThis page | 9 | 2 | 82% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's a very good design; very simple, easy to run, easy to use”
“Personally my favorite is probably drone-ci.”
“even though it'd suit us well”
“Very easy to stand up, does just fine.”
“Use Drone.io for free if you're small”
“I had good memories about droneci”
“Picked up the pieces when Drone CI rug yanked.”
“In Drone this was basically impossible.”
“Now that's a dead simple CI system.”
“seems to be another popular (and lightweight) alternative”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.