Head to head
Semaphore vs CircleCI
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
47/100 | 58/100Higher score | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #7 | #3 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 76 | 79 |
| AI Authority | 22 | 64 |
| Web Authority | 16 | 18 |
| Expert Assessment | 71 | 57 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | $0.003 per minute (Ubuntu ARM 2 vCPU); Ubuntu x64 2 vCPU $0.0075/min; self-hosted $0.0025/min · free tier: $15/month in free credits (~2,000 Ubuntu x64 2-vCPU minutes), 20 concurrent jobs by default, artifacts free to 20 GB/month egress and 100 GB/month storage; free support covers only account setup, projects and Git integration | From $15/month (Performance) · free tier: $0/month, no credit card: 30,000 credits/month (page also claims up to 6,000 build minutes), up to 5 active users, 1 GB network, 2 GB storage, 30x concurrency (macOS concurrency 1), Docker layer caching, private orbs, 5 self-hosted runner tasks; credits expire monthly with no rollover |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Credit-based (usage-based, prepaid credits) |
| Best for | Teams of roughly 5-150 engineers running frequent Linux, ARM or container builds who are unhappy with pipeline wall-clock time, want per-minute billing with no seat tax, and are willing to pay for fast human support or to self-host via Community Edition. | Teams needing heterogeneous compute (Linux + Arm + Windows + macOS or GPU jobs) in one pipeline, with bursty build volume they can absorb via high concurrency, plus open-source projects and qualifying startups exploiting the large free credit allowances. |
| Avoid if | Your workflow already lives entirely in GitHub or GitLab, you are macOS/iOS-dominant, you need a contractual response-time SLA on a small budget, you require verified SOC 2 / ISO 27001 evidence up front, or you need flexible refunds and mid-term cancellation. | You need SSO or policy-as-code without an annual sales contract, require a predictable flat monthly bill and cannot accept auto-refill plus forfeiture-on-cancellation, are already deep in a GitHub-native workflow, or want minimal YAML authoring. |
| Markets | SMB, Mid-Market, Agencies, Enterprise (Hybrid/Enterprise editions) | Startup, SMB, Enterprise, Open source projects |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.