Portainer vs CircleCI Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Portainer pricing | CircleCI pricing | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $1045/mo | $15/mo |
| Number of plans | 3 | 3 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | |
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
Price is one row. To weigh the features too, use our feature comparison template →
Starter
- 5, 10, or 15 nodes
- Community support
- Up to 16 vCPUs per node
- Online purchase only, not via resellers
Scale
Popular- 5 to 25 nodes
- 9x5 next business day support
- Up to 24 vCPUs per node
- Vendor onboarding
- Available through resellers
Enterprise
- 32 to unlimited vCPUs per node
- Prioritized 9x5 support, 24/7 option
- Production and non-production nodes
- Customizable license agreement
- Assigned support engineer
- Security assessment report
- TAA compliance certificate
- Managed platform services option
Free
- Up to 6,000 build minutes
- Up to 5 active users/month
- Docker, Windows, Linux, Arm, macOS, self hosted runners
- 30x concurrency
Performance
- 30,000 credits included free
- 5 active users included free
- Larger resources
- 80x concurrency
- Optional 8x5 support add-on
Scale
- Customizable plans
- Enterprise controls
- Largest resource classes
- All environments, even GPU
- Optional 24/7 support add-on
Portainer vs CircleCI FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- CircleCI is the cheaper option, starting at $15/mo vs $1045/mo for Portainer.
- Can I use either one for free?
- CircleCI has a free plan. Portainer doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Portainer uses hybrid pricing, while CircleCI goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Portainer: At four-figures-a-month before you even hit Enterprise, Portainer is priced for infrastructure teams at mid-size to large companies, not solo devs or small startups — this isn't competing with free/cheap container UIs, it's going after teams who'll pay for a polished management layer across many nodes. The 15-node, 45-day extended trial for Enterprise signals they're chasing larger deployments where the sales cycle is longer and the node count matters more than feature checklists. CircleCI: Sitting in the middle of the CI/CD pack, undercutting some enterprise-first competitors on entry price while still using usage-based mechanics that can get expensive at scale. They're clearly fishing for teams that started on GitHub Actions or Jenkins and now need something more purpose-built without jumping straight to enterprise pricing.
Still deciding? See the best Portainer alternatives or the best CircleCI alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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