User types and registration in CircleCI
This page explains the different user types in CircleCI and how to ensure all team members are properly registered to manage costs and access platform features.
Introduction
Understanding user types is important for managing your CircleCI organization effectively and controlling costs. CircleCI tracks three types of users:
- Registered users
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Users with a CircleCI account.
- Unregistered users
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Users who trigger builds but do not have a CircleCI account.
- Active users
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Users who trigger builds and consume credits (for billing purposes).
Registered users
A registered user is anyone who has created a CircleCI account by signing up at circleci.com/signup. Registered users have the following capabilities:
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Access to the CircleCI web app.
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The ability to view pipelines, jobs, and build history.
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The ability to trigger and re-run builds.
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Access to organization settings, depending on their role.
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A user profile with their email and authentication credentials.
Unregistered users
An unregistered user is someone who has triggered builds or pipelines in your CircleCI organization but has not signed up for a CircleCI account. Common scenarios include:
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Developers who commit code to a repository connected to CircleCI but have never logged in to CircleCI.
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Contributors who create pull requests that trigger CI builds.
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Bot accounts or service accounts that push commits without having a CircleCI account.
Active users
An active user is any user (registered or unregistered) who triggers the use of compute resources on non-OSS projects during a billing period. This includes activities such as:
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Commits from users that trigger builds, including PR merge commits.
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Re-running jobs in the CircleCI web application, including SSH Debugging.
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Approving On-Hold Jobs. The approver is considered the actor of all downstream jobs.
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Using scheduled workflows.
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Machine users.
| If your project is open source you will not be considered an active user. |
Active users are tracked for billing purposes. On the Free and Performance Plans, the first five active users are included. Additional active users beyond this limit are charged at 25,000 credits per user per month.
To find a list of your active users, log in to the CircleCI web app and navigate to .
Why user registration matters
Having your team members register for CircleCI accounts provides several benefits:
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Better visibility: Registered users can view build results, logs, and insights directly in the CircleCI web app.
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Improved collaboration: Team members can re-run failed builds, SSH into jobs for debugging, and approve manual workflows.
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Cost management: You can track and manage who is consuming credits in your organization.
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Access control: Registered users can be assigned roles and permissions within your organization.
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Audit trails: Actions taken by registered users are correctly attributed in audit logs.
How to become a registered user
If you or your team members are currently unregistered users (triggering builds without a CircleCI account), see the Sign up and Try CircleCI page for instructions.
How to ensure your team is registered
As an organization admin, you can help ensure all team members who trigger builds have CircleCI accounts:
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Identify unregistered users:
Navigate to in the CircleCI web app to view all active users. Unregistered users will be listed with limited information.
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Send invites:
Navigate to and use the Invite button to send email invitations to team members. See the Join Teammates section for detailed steps.
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Enable unregistered user spend prevention (Performance and Scale Plans only):
If you want to require registration before allowing builds, enable the "Prevent unregistered user spend" feature. See Prevent Unregistered Users From Spending Credits for instructions.
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Communicate with your team:
Let your team know about the benefits of registering and provide them with instructions or invite links.