Semaphore Cloud
- Free allowance
- USD 15 of free credits per month for every organization, about 2,000 Ubuntu x64 2-vCPU minutes; 20 concurrent jobs by default; no card
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rateUSD 15 of credit a month: about 2,000 minutes on f1-standard-2 (2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 45 GB disk) at USD 0.0075 a minute; USD 15 / USD 0.003 = 5,000 minutes on r1-standard-2 (ARM, 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM); 20 concurrent jobs by default; higher...
- Evidence
- documented26 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 | USD 15 of free credits per month for every organization, about 2,000 Ubuntu x64 2-vCPU minutes; 20 concurrent jobs by default; no card unit credits; metered on wall-clock; the credit is US dollars spent per minute at each machine's rate: f1-standard-2 (x64) USD 0.0075, r1-standard-2 (ARM) USD 0.003, a2-standard-4 (macOS) USD 0.09; a job under one minute is billed as one minute |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
9.6 GB of cache storage per project; time spent queued for a concurrency slot is not billed; the FAQ states that open-source and free plans cannot create private projects |
| Binding | request-rate the USD 15 credit is spent at about 2,000 f1-standard-2 minutes a month, long before 20 concurrent jobs or the 24-hour job ceiling bind; a monthly minute pool has no kind of its own and sits under request-rate as in the other hosted CI records |
| Identity | email sign-up needs a GitHub or Bitbucket account; the free usage is advertised as 'Start free — $15/mo, no card'; the flow then asks for an organization name and a short survey |
| Egress | artifact egress is free up to 20 GB a month with 100 GB a month of artifact storage; beyond it USD 0.35 per GB of egress and USD 0.07 per GB of storage free allowance: 20 GB of artifact egress a month |
| Per-object cap | execution_time_limit is 1 hour by default and at most 24 hours (1,440 minutes); jobs are terminated at the limit, and a block or job limit longer than its pipeline's is rejected |
| Retention | artifacts in the workflow and job namespaces are kept at most 400 days; project artifacts have no age limit; the agent and every file on it are discarded when the job ends (400 days) |
| Interface | git, cli a pipeline YAML such as .semaphore/semaphore.yml in a GitHub or Bitbucket repository, or the visual workflow editor; the sem CLI opens an SSH session into a running job |
| Tooling | Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 images on F1 x86_64 machines with Docker environments, Ubuntu 24.04 on R1 ARM machines, macOS Xcode images on A2 machines; the toolbox commands checkout, cache, artifact, sem-version and sem-service; the sem-ai CLI and an MCP server. The Community Edition is Apache-2.0 software the user installs and runs on a rented or free machine, after every hosted offer |
| Composes with | a monthly dollar credit rather than a minute count, so the R1 ARM machine at USD 0.003 a minute stretches it furthest; artifacts leave free up to 20 GB a month, and the project artifact namespace has no age limit |
| Reliability | a job runs on an ephemeral agent destroyed at the end of the job; a shared runner address can already be at the Docker Hub anonymous pull limit |
| Notes | The pricing page names one free allowance, USD 15 a month for every organization. The Cloud page FAQ says Linux and macOS open-source projects get free parallel CI and gives no number, so any open-source allowance beyond the USD 15 is unverified. The Community Edition (Apache-2.0) is software the user installs and runs, the last resort after every hosted offer. |
| Evidence note | documented pricing, billing, machine-type, pipeline-YAML, artifact, FAQ and sign-up pages were read and quoted on 2026-10-30; no job was run. Raised to measured by a probe of a job on f1-standard-2. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 26
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/pricing | every organization gets USD 15 of credit a month, about 2,000 minutes on the 2-vCPU x64 machine |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/pricing | part of the text of Free tier, above |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/pricing | artifact egress free to 20 GB a month and storage to 100 GB a month, then USD 0.35 and USD 0.07 per GB |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/pricing | part of the text of Limits, above |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/using-semaphore/billing | f1-standard-2 costs USD 0.0075 a minute and f1-standard-4 USD 0.015 |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/using-semaphore/billing | r1-standard-2 (ARM) costs USD 0.003 a minute |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/using-semaphore/billing | a job under one minute is billed as a full minute |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/reference/machine-types | f1-standard-2 is 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 45 GB disk |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/reference/machine-types | r1-standard-2 (ARM) is 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 50 GB disk |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/reference/pipeline-yaml | the default execution time limit is 1 hour |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/reference/pipeline-yaml | the execution time limit is at most 24 hours |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/using-semaphore/artifacts | workflow and job artifacts are kept at most 400 days |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/using-semaphore/jobs | the agent and its files are discarded after each job |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/getting-started/tour/sign-up | sign-up needs a GitHub or Bitbucket account |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/semaphore-vs-circleci | the USD 15 monthly free usage needs no card |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/semaphore-vs-circleci | a self-hostable free Community Edition exists beside the hosted service |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/getting-started/faq | free and open-source plans cannot create private projects |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.semaphore.io/getting-started/faq | a runner address can already be rate-limited by Docker Hub |
| 2026-10-30 | semaphore.io/cloud | open-source projects are said to get free parallel CI, with no number stated |
| 2026-11-02 | semaphore.io/open-source | the Open Source page covers the self-hosted editions and lists no hosted open-source allowance |
| 2026-11-02 | semaphore.io/pricing | the pricing page still names USD 15 a month as the free allowance |
| 2026-11-03 | semaphore.io/cloud | the current Cloud page FAQ promises free parallel CI for open-source projects with no number |
| 2026-11-03 | semaphore.io/pricing | the pricing page still names USD 15 a month as the free allowance |
| 2026-11-04 | semaphore.io/pricing | 20 concurrent jobs by default, higher on request |
| 2026-11-04 | semaphore.io/pricing | USD 15 of free credits a month |
| 2026-11-04 | docs.semaphore.io/reference/pipeline-yaml | default job time limit 1 hour |