Woodpecker CI
Hacker ApprovedRanked 5 of 20 CI/CD services by recommenders
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.
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.
40 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 37
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 93%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 37 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 12 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 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 to set up and maintain
“Gitea/Forgejo + Woodpecker CI has been a really simple, lightweight and easy to maintain solution”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions” “it's been dead simple. It doesn't have many bells and whistles, but honestly I think that's good.”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com” “it's really simple to setup and maintain for anyone looking for a self-hosted ci solution”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” - Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab”
- Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “The Forge We Deserve”
- Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com”
- Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Down”
Works with Gitea and Forgejo
“Gitea/Forgejo + Woodpecker CI has been a really simple, lightweight and easy to maintain solution”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions” “We've been self-hosting Gitea with Drone/Woodpecker for years”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “GitHub is having issues now” “I'm self-hosting Gitea and Woodpecker CI for least 6 years”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com” - Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “GitHub is having issues now”
- Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”
- Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects”
- Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com”
Free and open source
“Woodpecker is perfectly okay and more free in regards to what you can do”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub” “It's an open source CI tool, that supports integration with GitHub”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” “Woodpecker CI supports GitHub”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions” Works well at small scale
“it works better overall (for example, because of better caching on that single instance, our docker images build faster)”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “GitHub Is Experiencing Difficulties” “small enough to easily run on one box for one repo”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “GitHub Is Experiencing Difficulties” “has been working for us really well”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub” - Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Disruption with Some GitHub Services – Resolved”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Missing features from GitHub
“Coming from Github there's a few basic things that are missing in woodpekcer that may frustrate you but it's improving regularly.”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub” “Woodpecker CI if it ever gets feature parity”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Advent of Sysadmin 2025” Finicky and annoying to debug
“Woodpecker is still a bit finicky and debugging it can be a bit annoying”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Incident with Github.com” “I struggled with Woodpecker for a bit”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “GitHub is having issues now”
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 | — | — |
| Woodpecker CIThis page | 37 | 3 | 93% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 58 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“move a lot of complexity into your CI solution”
“very simple, easy to run, easy to use, integrates with most systems you'd want to”
“hook up a CI engine like woodpecker via hooks”
“could be a good candidate to replace GitLab CI, as it uses very similar concepts and workflow description files”
“Works great for small-medium scale”
“Coming from Github there's a few basic things that are missing in woodpekcer that may frustrate you but it's improving regularly.”
“it's been dead simple. It doesn't have many bells and whistles, but honestly I think that's good.”
“Woodpecker is perfectly okay and more free in regards to what you can do”
“has been working for us really well”
“Woodpecker is still a bit finicky and debugging it can be a bit annoying”
“I'm self-hosting Gitea and Woodpecker CI for least 6 years”
“Generally pretty hands-off once you get it set up.”
“self-hosted Forgejo + Woodpecker CI”
“small enough to easily run on one box for one repo”
“it works better overall (for example, because of better caching on that single instance, our docker images build faster)”
“self host Woodpecker is really easy”
“Gitea works really nice with Woodpecker CI”
“woodpeckerCI looks like a good solution but I don't have direct experience with it.”
“it works well with containers and is delightfully simple”
“you have much better alternatives like Woodpecker, where you can actually understand the underlying code”
“Your best bet is to self host woodpecker CI.”
“Ooh, Woodpecker CI works with Gitea and Forgejo.”
“I struggled with Woodpecker for a bit”
“We've been self-hosting Gitea with Drone/Woodpecker for years”
“I've had a good experience with Woodpecker CI.”
“using Woodpecker CI + my own CI/CD system”
“Restate, Woodpecker CI, Erlang BEAM VM”
“OVH/uTask, OVH/cds, Restate, Woodpecker CI”
“my own ci runner with woodpecker”
“how nice Woodpecker CI can be, especially for simpler setups”
“so far it's looking promising”
“because of having used it for years already”
“Gitea/Forgejo + Woodpecker CI has been a really simple, lightweight and easy to maintain solution”
“it's really simple to setup and maintain for anyone looking for a self-hosted ci solution”
“Woodpecker CI supports GitHub”
“I resorted to a local forgejo + woodpecker-ci”
“It's an open source CI tool, that supports integration with GitHub”
“Woodpecker CI if it ever gets feature parity”
“woodpeckerCI does its job so I can still run the tests even after the migration”
“it works great and is much faster than the free CI that Codeberg can afford”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.