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CircleCI vs GitHub Actions comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CircleCI
Ranking in Build Automation
13th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitHub Actions is 11.4%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read and understand issues when emailing them. They reply to me with a totally different context about the problem. Just yesterday, my web applications failed to 'yarn build' after I downgraded the resource class from extr-large to large. I contacted support and got no reply. Billing is a mess. There is duplicate information in the bill downloaded from their website and when I asked for a consolidated bill, they just answered that they didn't have it. There is no transparency on how many billed minutes and credits I spent each day both on their website and the monthly bill which makes it difficult to understand when the monthly bill contains many refill item charges. It is difficult or impossible to track usage and burndown of my subscription and to gain total outstanding refill amounts on a daily basis. Their website doesn't provide sufficient information on credits allocated/calculated for my extra-large resource class.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with various environments and cloud providers enhances automation
I use GitHub Actions for CI/CD pipelines. I automate infrastructure, deployment, and all processes. Most companies use CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub Actions is one of the tools available for this purpose The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is that it is completely free. It can be integrated…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"It's a stable product."
"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"We can trigger files manually or automate processes."
"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."
"Creating workflows in YAML format is straightforward and easy to comprehend. This includes both understanding and writing workflows. Additionally, the downloading aspect for third-party instances can also be easily done. It's worth noting that vulnerability analysis and similar tasks should be part of our automation through data workflows. Furthermore, we can break down our processes step by step, starting from building, then moving on to analysis, testing, and finally deploying in production and the clear environment. All of these tasks can be efficiently managed within this platform."
"I find the automation feature of GitHub Actions most valuable for our building processes. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, so there's no extra configuration needed, making the building process easy and efficient. GitHub Actions handles scalability well, automatically managing execution infrastructure without requiring additional configurations. We haven't yet explored GitHub Actions' support for AI projects, as we haven't used its AI capabilities."
"The most valuable features of GitHub Actions include its seamless integration within GitHub, which simplifies the CI/CD pipeline setup. The scalability of using different types of runners—both public and private runners—enhances deployment flexibility."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"Billing is a mess."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"We still use Jenkins for some tasks, which suggests there may be areas for improvement in GitHub Actions."
"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."
"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."
"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."
"There could be more integration options with different platforms."
"The UI could be better."
"The minor drawback of GitHub Actions is the management of the dashboard and pipeline runs, which needs improvement. The dashboard for running pipelines could be better."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CircleCI?
The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
Beware of skyrocketing bills as CircleCI does not provide transparency into how they charge refills. Their monthly billing statement is almost unreadable and their online dashboard doesn't provide ...
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read...
What do you like most about GitHub Actions?
I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I would rate pricing a seven, which leans toward the expensive side. However, there is still value for money, and that's why we continue using it.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
Frankly, I cannot imagine something that could be improved in GitHub Actions; there's a lot of capabilities, and the feature set is more advanced than we use. The pricing is high for the advanced s...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI vs. GitHub Actions and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.