Using credits

Credits are used to pay for users and usage based on machine type, size, and features such as Docker Layer Caching.

For example, the 25,000 credit package would provide 2,500 build minutes when using a Docker or Linux "medium" compute at 10 credits per minute. CircleCI provides multiple compute sizes so you can optimize builds between performance (improved developer productivity) and value.

When applicable, build time can be further reduced by using parallelism, which splits the job into multiple tests that are executed at the same time. With 2x parallelism, a build that usually runs for 2,500 minutes could be executed in 1,250 minutes, further improving developer productivity. Note that when two executors are running in parallel for 1,250 minutes each, total build time remains 2,500 minutes.

Every month, you are charged for your selected credit package at the beginning of the month.

You can choose to pay for premium features per active user, compute, and optionally, premium support.

On the Performance Plan, when you reach 0 credits, you will be refilled approximately 25% of your credit subscription, with a minimum refill of 25,000 credits. For example, if your monthly package size is 100,000 credits, you will automatically be refilled 25,000 credits (at $.0006 each, not including applicable taxes) when you reach 2000 remaining credits.

If you notice that your account is receiving repeated refills, review your credit usage by logging in to the CircleCI web app, then select Plan  Plan Usage. In most cases, increasing your credit package should minimize repeat refills. You can manage your plan by clicking Plan Overview.

On the Free Plan, jobs will fail to run once you have run out of credits.

Performance Plan: Credits expire one year after purchase. Unused credits will be forfeited when the account subscription is canceled.

You can pay from inside the CircleCI app for monthly pricing.

On the Performance Plan, at the beginning of your billing cycle, you will be charged for premium support tiers and your monthly credit allocation. Any subsequent credit refills during the month (such as the auto-refilling at approximately 25% when there are 0 credits remaining) will be paid at the time of the refill.

Prepaid billing is a payment option for customers on the Performance Plan. Prepaid Billing allows you to purchase credits in bulk, pay upfront, and be able to get discounted prices for credits based on volume purchased.

All Performance Plan customers can choose to get on prepaid billing through the CircleCI web app. To access this option, follow these steps:

You will still have access to any balance credits that were previously purchased, and the 12 month expiry date will remain.

Discounting for prepaid billing starts at a purchase volume of 5 Million credits and up.

Similar to what happens today on Performance plans, when you run out of credits your credit package will be automatically renewed at the purchase level you have selected.

Upon selecting prepaid billing, your credit card will be charged immediately. Subsequently, when you run out of credits, your credit card will be charged again to provide you with a refill.

You can follow these steps:

Yes, all prepaid billing customers still receive the benefit of 30,000 credits and 5 free user seats every month.

Yes, log in to the CircleCI web app, then navigate to Plan  Share & Transfer.

On non-free plans, you can share your plan with free organizations for which you have admin access using the Add Shared Organization option. All orgs you have shared your plan with will then be listed on the Share & Transfer page and child organizations will bill all credits and other usage to the parent org.

On non-free plans, you can transfer your plan to another free organization for which you have admin access using the Transfer Plan option. When you transfer a paid plan to another org, your org will be downgraded to the Free Plan.

You pay to the next nearest credit. First we round up to the nearest second, and then up to the nearest credit.

Calculate your monthly storage and network costs by finding your storage and network usage on the CircleCI web app by navigating to Plan  Plan Usage.

Calculate your monthly IP ranges costs by finding your IP ranges usage on the CircleCI app by navigating to Plan > Plan Usage.

In addition to the IP Ranges Usage summary, you can navigate to the IP Ranges tab to find more details about your data usage. In this tab, the IP ranges usage value represents the raw number of bytes in or out of the Docker container during execution of a job with IP ranges enabled.

This number includes the job’s overall network transfer and any other bytes that go in or out of the Docker container. Data used to pull in the Docker image to the container before the job starts executing will not incur usage costs for jobs with IP ranges enabled.

This feature will consume 450 credits from your account for each GB of data used for jobs with IP ranges enabled. You can also view job-specific details of IP ranges usage in the Resources tab on the Job Details UI page. See IP ranges pricing for more information.

You can view an approximation of network transfer for any Docker job (excluding Remote Docker) in the Resources tab on the Job Details UI page. Convert this value to GB if it is not already in GB and multiply by 450 credits to predict the approximate cost of enabling IP ranges on that Docker job.

Credit usage covers access to compute. We prefer to keep usage costs as low as possible to encourage frequent job runs, which is the foundation of a good CI practice. Per-active-user fees cover access to platform features and job orchestration. This includes features like dependency caching, artifact caching, and workspaces, all of which speed up build times without incurring additional compute cost.

An active user is any user who triggers the use of compute resources on non-OSS projects. This includes activities such as:

To find a list of your active users, log in to the CircleCI web app, select Plan  Plan Usage  Users.

No. If you are notified that a job is "queued", it indicates that your job is waiting due to a plan or concurrency limit. If your job indicates that it is "preparing", it means that CircleCI is setting up or dispatching your job so that it may run.

The first credit card charge on the day you upgrade to a paid plan or change paid plans, in addition to the following charges from CircleCI:

Open source organizations on our Free Plan receive 400,000 free credits per month that can be spent on Linux open source projects. Open-source credit availability and limits will not be visible in the UI.

If you build on macOS, we also offer organizations on our Free Plan 25,000 free credits per month to use on macOS open source builds. To find out more, visit the CircleCI support portal, which includes an Ask AI option to get you the information you need. Free credits for macOS open source builds can be used on a maximum of 2 concurrent jobs per organization.

CircleCI no longer offers discounts for open source customers on the Performance Plan.

Docker layer caching (DLC) reduces build times on pipelines where Docker images are built by only rebuilding Docker layers that have changed (read more on the Docker Layer Caching page). DLC costs 200 credits per job run.

To estimate your DLC cost, look at the jobs in your config file with Docker layer caching enabled, and the number of Docker images you are building in those jobs. There are cases where a job can be written once in a config file but the job runs multiple times in a pipeline, for example, with parallelism enabled.

Note that the benefits of Docker layer caching are only apparent on pipelines that are building Docker images, and reduces image build times by reusing the unchanged layers of the application image built during your job. If your pipeline does not include a job where Docker images are built, Docker layer caching will provide no benefit.

By purchasing a paid support plan with CircleCI, you can change the response time from our Support team to be as low as 30 minutes, with a 24 x 7 coverage plan, to ensure that any issues you have while using CircleCI are investigated as quickly as possible. For more information, refer to this support article.