Review · Developer tools
Semaphore review
Open source and hosted CI/CD with per-minute billing, no per-seat fees and tools aimed at coding agents.
By the KeenVerdict research desk · Updated November 9, 2026
- Features (40%)
- 8.0
- Ease of use (30%)
- 8.4
- Value (30%)
- 8.5
Semaphore is the simplest pricing model here: there are no per-seat fees, every organization gets $15 of free usage each month, and after that you pay per minute for the machines you use. Ubuntu x64 costs $0.0075 per minute on 2 vCPU, Ubuntu ARM $0.003, macOS $0.09 on 4 vCPU, and self-hosted agents $0.0025 per minute on any machine. Artifacts are free up to 20 GB of egress and 100 GB of storage a month, each project gets 9.6 GB of cache, and 20 concurrent jobs are included by default. Semaphore also offers an open source Community Edition, monorepo support, test reports and an MCP server that lets coding agents configure and run pipelines. The catch is that support is unbundled: free support covers setup and Git integration, while advanced troubleshooting starts with a Basic plan at $50 a month. Its integration catalog is also smaller than the big platforms.
Who it is for
Teams that want hosted CI without seat fees and pay only for the minutes they run.
Price
$15 of free usage every month; pay as you go from $0.0075 per minute on 2 vCPU Ubuntu x64.
Ubuntu x64 $0.0075 /min 2vCPU
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 9, 2026.
Key features
- Per-minute billing on Ubuntu ARM, Ubuntu x64 and macOS machines
- Self-hosted agents at $0.0025 per minute on any machine
- 20 concurrent jobs included by default
- Monorepo support, test reports and deployment automation
- MCP server so coding agents can set up and run CI
Strengths and weaknesses
- Strength: No per-seat fees
- Strength: $15 of free credits each month, about 2,000 Ubuntu x64 2 vCPU minutes
- Strength: Open source Community Edition for self-hosting
- Weakness: Support beyond basic help is a separate paid plan from $50 a month
- Weakness: Smaller integration catalog than GitHub Actions or Jenkins
- Weakness: Higher concurrency limits are by request
Key facts
- Free usage: $15 of credits per month
- macOS rate: $0.09 per minute, 4 vCPU
- Concurrency: 20 concurrent jobs by default
Where it ranks
Semaphore is No. 7 in our Best CI/CD Tools verdict.
Alternatives we scored
Visit semaphore.io · Questions or corrections: editorial@keenverdict.com