CircleCI is a commercial CI/CD service billed in credits, with a self-managed CircleCI Server edition; these pages cover replacing it with self-hosted Woodpecker CI, Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD.
Compares CircleCI with Woodpecker CI, the Apache-2.0 container-step engine that connects to the same GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket repositories CircleCI builds: credits and concurrency caps against servers and agents you run, orbs against container-image plugins, and the config rewrite involved.
Compares CircleCI with Jenkins: hosted credits, resource classes and orbs against a controller with build agents, Jenkinsfile pipelines and more than 2,300 plugins, Kubernetes pod agents, and the plugin and LTS upgrade work that Jenkins moves onto your team.
Compares CircleCI with GitLab CI/CD on a self-managed GitLab instance, where source hosting and CI consolidate on one platform: .gitlab-ci.yml against CircleCI config, GitLab Runner against CircleCI runners, and which features need a paid GitLab tier.
Cost of ownership by component: CircleCI plan fees, per-user charges, credits per build minute and network and storage overage, or a CircleCI Server contract, against build servers, storage, upgrades, support and staff time for Woodpecker CI, Jenkins or GitLab Runner.
What can leave CircleCI and how: config files already in each repository, artifacts through the API before the 30-day retention window closes, environment variables that the app never shows again, and the secret rotation a move should include.
Why CircleCI's own answer for isolated networks is CircleCI Server with a vendor-provided image registry login, Kubernetes, S3-compatible storage, Nomad machines and GitHub Enterprise, and how Jenkins, Woodpecker CI or GitLab compare when builds must run with no internet access.
Moving CircleCI pipelines to Woodpecker CI: mapping jobs, workflows and executors to container steps and parallel workflow files, replacing orbs with Woodpecker plugins, re-creating environment variables that CircleCI will not display, and moving artifacts and caches.
Moving CircleCI config.yml pipelines to Jenkinsfiles: workflows to stages, Docker executors to Kubernetes pod agents, orbs to plugins or shared libraries, contexts to Jenkins credentials, and a parallel-run plan before CircleCI credits run out.
For teams that need CI inside their own network: CircleCI Server's Kubernetes, Nomad, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Redis and Vault footprint and unpublished price, against running Woodpecker CI, Jenkins or GitLab CI/CD themselves.
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