Harness CI Free plan (Harness Cloud)
- Free allowance
- Free plans receive 2,000 Harness Cloud credits every month, and unused credits expire at month end; Linux xsmall (2 cores, 7 GB) costs 1 credit a minute and Linux small (4 cores, 15 GB) 2 credits a minute
- Verdict
- fails: identitythe identity required is not reachable without it
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institutionno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rate2,000 credits a month on Free, unused credits expire; Linux xsmall (2 cores, 7 GB) 1 credit a minute, Linux small (4 cores, 15 GB) 2 credits a minute; 2 concurrent pipeline executions per account on the Free plan, not editable; 2...
- Evidence
- documented27 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-05checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-12-05
| Free tier | Free plans receive 2,000 Harness Cloud credits every month, and unused credits expire at month end; Linux xsmall (2 cores, 7 GB) costs 1 credit a minute and Linux small (4 cores, 15 GB) 2 credits a minute unit credits; metered on wall-clock; the pricing page's Free plan lists Harness Open Source, Litmus Chaos and community support and names no CI module or Harness Cloud allowance; the Harness Cloud product page and the CI documentation state the 2,000 a month |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
2 GB of CI Intelligence cache storage on Free, with the oldest caches evicted beyond it; use beyond the credits continues and is invoiced in arrears |
| Binding | request-rate identity binds before any limit: Harness Cloud on Free needs card validation and a business email domain. Among the limits, the 2,000 monthly credits are 2,000 xsmall minutes, about 33 hours (2,000 / 60); the 1-hour stage timeout binds first for any single long job |
| Identity | institution Harness Cloud on the Free plan is limited to business email domains, with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and other unverified domains blocked, and Free plans require credit card validation to use it; the Harness Cloud product page says 'No credit card required', which the CI documentation contradicts |
| Egress | network transfer from Harness Cloud to customer-managed storage is limited to 1 GB on Free, 5 GB on Startup and 10 GB on Enterprise free allowance: 1 GB of network transfer to customer-managed storage |
| Per-object cap | on the Free plan a stage times out at 1 hour and a pipeline at 2 hours; each CI stage runs in a new ephemeral VM |
| Retention | unverified: no log or artifact retention period for the Free plan was found in the pages read; cache above the 2 GB Free limit evicts the oldest caches |
| Interface | git a Harness pipeline built in the visual editor or YAML, with a CI stage on Harness Cloud infrastructure and a Git connector to the repository |
| Tooling | Harness-managed VMs: Linux AMD64 and ARM64 from 2 to 96 cores, Windows, and macOS on Apple M4; Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 images with preinstalled tools; steps run on the VM or in a Docker container. The local runner, which the user installs and runs on a machine of their own, rented or free, has no build limit and needs no card; it comes after the hosted offer |
| Composes with | 2,000 Linux xsmall minutes a month behind a card check and a business email domain; the 1 GB transfer limit to outside storage makes it a place to run work rather than to ship large outputs |
| Reliability | credits used beyond the allowance are invoiced in arrears, and Harness may suspend Harness Cloud executions when they are not paid |
| Notes | The allowance is real on paper, 2,000 credits a month with 20 concurrent Linux stages, but the account-wide limit of 2 concurrent pipeline executions and the 1-hour stage timeout make it small, and the gate in front of it is a business email domain plus card validation. The Developer 360 post (updated 2026-09-30) lists Continuous Integration among the Free plan modules and the CI documentation still states the 2,000 credits, although the pricing page's Free plan names no CI module; whether a new Free account receives the credits, and whether a custom-domain address passes the business-domain check, is unverified: behind a sign-up. |
| Evidence note | documented the CI subscription, Harness Cloud and pipeline settings documentation, the pricing page and the Harness Cloud product page were read and quoted on 2026-10-30; the sign-up gate itself is a single-page app and was not passed. Raised by a sign-up outcome with a generic and a custom-domain address. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 27
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | 2,000 free credits a month on Free, expiring at month end |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | Linux xsmall is 2 cores and 7 GB with a minute multiplier of 1 |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | Linux small costs 2 credits a minute |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | Harness Cloud runs 20 concurrent Linux stages on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | network transfer to customer-managed storage is 1 GB on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | CI Intelligence cache storage is 2 GB on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | old caches are evicted beyond the limit |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | use beyond the credits is invoiced in arrears |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | 2,000 free Harness Cloud credits a month on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | part of the text of Binding, above |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | Harness Cloud is limited to business email domains |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | each stage runs in a new ephemeral VM |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | builds on the user's own infrastructure have no limit |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/harness-platform/use-harness-platform/p | 2 concurrent pipeline executions per account on Free, not editable |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/harness-platform/use-harness-platform/p | a stage times out at 1 hour on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | developer.harness.io/harness-platform/use-harness-platform/p | a pipeline times out at 2 hours on Free |
| 2026-10-30 | www.harness.io/pricing | the Free plan on the pricing page names no CI module |
| 2026-10-30 | www.harness.io/products/continuous-integration/harness-cloud | the product page states 2,000 build minutes a month and no card |
| 2026-11-02 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | the CI documentation still gives Free plans 2,000 credits a month, unused credits expiring at month end |
| 2026-11-02 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | the documentation still limits Harness Cloud on Free to business domains and blocks general-use domains |
| 2026-11-02 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | the Harness Cloud page still states 2,000 Harness Cloud credits a month on Free |
| 2026-11-02 | www.harness.io/blog/introducing-developer-360-pricing-by-har | the Developer 360 post, last updated 2026-09-30, lists Continuous Integration among the modules available on Harness Free Plans |
| 2026-11-02 | www.harness.io/products/continuous-integration | the CI product page offers Harness Cloud on a free start with no credit card, which the CI documentation contradicts |
| 2026-11-02 | developer.harness.io/harness-ai/subscriptions-and-licenses/f | Flex Pricing, in limited availability, gives a Free account 1,000 HSUs a month and does not mention the 2,000 Harness Cloud credits |
| 2026-11-04 | developer.harness.io/continuous-integration/troubleshooting- | 2000 credits a month on Free |
| 2026-11-04 | developer.harness.io/harness-platform/use-harness-platform/p | Free plan pipeline timeout 2 hr |
| 2026-11-04 | developer.harness.io/docs/continuous-integration/use-ci/set- | card validation on Free |