{"slug": "circleci", "name": "CircleCI", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 6, "warners": 1, "score": 2.981, "rising": 1.35, "first": "2025-12-14", "latest": "2026-08-27", "why": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 0, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://circleci.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["CircleCI"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 791536193, "item_id": 49471012, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471012", "by": "nightpool", "date": "2026-08-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use CircleCI more than Actions most of the time", "excerpt": "Yes, I was actually a part-time Jenkins admin back in high school and college. I use CircleCI more than Actions most of the time (and used Travis before that), especially for higher cost workflows, but there's no beating Actions in terms of its ease of setup and ecosystem advantage. It's way easier to just set up a simple JS file that runs on every commit in Actions compared to anywhere else. Would be happy to be pro", "context": "former part-time Jenkins admin", "use_case": "higher cost CI workflows", "switched_from": "Travis CI", "story": "GitHub Outage Tracker: Is GitHub Cooked?"}, {"id": 789309857, "item_id": 49331866, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331866", "by": "bdcravens", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Classic CI vendors like Semaphore, Circle, etc are options.", "excerpt": "Classic CI vendors like Semaphore, Circle, etc are options.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub Actions alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 751545520, "item_id": 46971595, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971595", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-02-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their \"Debug with SSH\" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past", "excerpt": "I looked at their docs. Their \"Debug with SSH\" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past: instead of adding a CI command to cat a log file to the terminal, then examining it with GitHub's inadequate log viewer (which seems to bug out, at least under Firefox, when logs are too long), I could have SSH'ed in and examined the log files with my familiar tools. If I may ask, what about Circ", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?"}, {"id": 751265600, "item_id": 46954100, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954100", "by": "zenoware", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space.", "excerpt": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space. Not as flashy as GHA but gets the job done.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 740225873, "item_id": 46264117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264117", "by": "stephen", "date": "2025-12-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the morass of copy-pasted (and yes orbs) CircleCI yaml files we have strewn about our internals repos", "excerpt": "I thought Dagger had/has a lot of potential to be \"AWS-CDK for CI pipelines\". I.e. declaratively setup a web of CI / deployment tasks, based on docker, with a code-first DSL, instead of the morass of copy-pasted (and yes orbs) CircleCI yaml files we have strewn about our internals repos. But their DSL for defining your pipelines is ... golang? Like who would pick golang as \"a friendly language for setting up configs\"", "context": "", "use_case": "CI pipelines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dagger: Define software delivery workflows and dev environments"}]}], "who": [{"by": "nightpool", "context": "former part-time Jenkins admin", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471012", "date": "2026-08-27"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["ci pipelines", "ci", "higher cost ci workflows", "github actions alternative"], "compared": [{"slug": "github-actions", "name": "GitHub Actions", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "concourse-ci", "name": "Concourse CI", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "jenkins", "name": "Jenkins", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 751791440, "item_id": 46986965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46986965", "by": "olafmol", "date": "2026-02-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's one of the bettter choices.", "excerpt": "This is exactly what my team told me when they switched from Concourse CI to CircleCI. I was surprised, this wasn't really discussed, but the pressure on the team to deliver features was increasing, and they were struggling to much with all the tooling instead of delivering functionality. So they deciced to switch to something not so sexy but dependable and stable. Funny thing, about 1 year later we got acquired by C", "context": "works at CircleCI", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "Concourse CI", "story": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954054", "title": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331033", "title": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454728", "title": "GitHub Outage Tracker: Is GitHub Cooked?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202624", "title": "Dagger: Define software delivery workflows and dev environments", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"warn": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 791536193, "item_id": 49471012, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471012", "by": "nightpool", "date": "2026-08-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use CircleCI more than Actions most of the time", "excerpt": "Yes, I was actually a part-time Jenkins admin back in high school and college. I use CircleCI more than Actions most of the time (and used Travis before that), especially for higher cost workflows, but there's no beating Actions in terms of its ease of setup and ecosystem advantage. It's way easier to just set up a simple JS file that runs on every commit in Actions compared to anywhere else. Would be happy to be pro", "context": "former part-time Jenkins admin", "use_case": "higher cost CI workflows", "switched_from": "Travis CI", "story": "GitHub Outage Tracker: Is GitHub Cooked?"}, {"id": 789409361, "item_id": 49338085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338085", "by": "esseph", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "compare", "quote": "you will be just fine in GitLab, CircleCI, Jenkins", "excerpt": "Pipelines are not magic. You want a couple of primitives in there, variable substitution, maybe lite secret management. Depending on the type and languages you work across they could also be 100% unique to each company, language, project, and industry. LLMs have also further made pipeline creation pretty trivial. If you can use or make a GitHub action you will be just fine in GitLab, CircleCI, Jenkins, or a couple of", "context": "", "use_case": "CI pipelines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789309857, "item_id": 49331866, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331866", "by": "bdcravens", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Classic CI vendors like Semaphore, Circle, etc are options.", "excerpt": "Classic CI vendors like Semaphore, Circle, etc are options.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub Actions alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 751545520, "item_id": 46971595, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971595", "by": "rmunn", "date": "2026-02-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their \"Debug with SSH\" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past", "excerpt": "I looked at their docs. Their \"Debug with SSH\" feature is something I would have liked to have had many times in the past: instead of adding a CI command to cat a log file to the terminal, then examining it with GitHub's inadequate log viewer (which seems to bug out, at least under Firefox, when logs are too long), I could have SSH'ed in and examined the log files with my familiar tools. If I may ask, what about Circ", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?"}, {"id": 751265600, "item_id": 46954100, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954100", "by": "zenoware", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space.", "excerpt": "Still love CircleCI. They're one of the most mature in the space. Not as flashy as GHA but gets the job done.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What CI do you use instead of GitHub Actions?"}, {"id": 740225873, "item_id": 46264117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264117", "by": "stephen", "date": "2025-12-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the morass of copy-pasted (and yes orbs) CircleCI yaml files we have strewn about our internals repos", "excerpt": "I thought Dagger had/has a lot of potential to be \"AWS-CDK for CI pipelines\". I.e. declaratively setup a web of CI / deployment tasks, based on docker, with a code-first DSL, instead of the morass of copy-pasted (and yes orbs) CircleCI yaml files we have strewn about our internals repos. But their DSL for defining your pipelines is ... golang? Like who would pick golang as \"a friendly language for setting up configs\"", "context": "", "use_case": "CI pipelines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dagger: Define software delivery workflows and dev environments"}]}