Drone CI Alternatives After the Harness Acquisition

Drone.io still loads, but it is no longer an independent project. Harness acquired Drone on August 5, 2020, and the Drone site now carries a "Drone.io Joins the Harness Family" banner. Drone's LICENSE file splits the code in two. The Community Edition, built with the oss and nolimit tags, is Apache 2.0. The Enterprise Edition falls under the Drone Non-Commercial License, which limits commercial use to a 32-day trial.

Harness folded Drone into a larger project. It released Gitness in September 2023, and the repository now calls it Harness Open Source: Git hosting, pipelines, Gitspaces and an artifact registry under Apache 2.0. The README keeps a Drone snapshot on a drone branch and states a long-term goal of pipeline parity so Drone users can migrate. For a team still running Drone, that means a maintenance branch, not a roadmap.

The list starts with the two picks that read Drone-style YAML, then moves to hosted CI services and self-hosted classics.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Woodpecker CI

Woodpecker began as a fork of Drone 0.8, the last fully Apache 2.0 release. The first commit landed on April 3, 2019, and the project took the Woodpecker name that August. Pipelines are still YAML files of container steps, so many Drone configs move over with small edits.

The docs default to the 3.20.x series, and the code is Apache 2.0 licensed with 7.8k GitHub stars. The README puts idle memory use at about 100 MB for the server and 30 MB per agent, with SQLite as the default database. Codeberg runs it as its main CI engine.

Best for: Self-hosters who liked Drone's simplicity and want to stay open source.

Pricing:

• Free, Apache 2.0 licence
• No paid edition or hosted plan

Watch out for:

• Woodpecker split from Drone in 2019 and the two have diverged since, so plugins and newer Drone features may need rework. Check the Woodpecker about page for its history before migrating.

Official site: Woodpecker CI.

Harness Open Source

The Harness Open Source README describes the project as the next generation of Drone. Where Drone only ran pipelines, this adds Git repository hosting, Gitspaces for cloud development environments and an artifact registry, all under Apache 2.0. The repository, which used to host Drone itself, has 38.8k stars.

Harness also sells commercial CI. Its pricing page lists Harness Open Source inside the Free plan, while the Essentials plan allows up to 60 concurrent pipeline executions and 60 self-hosted runners.

Best for: Teams that want Git hosting and pipelines in one self-hosted service from Drone's owner.

Pricing:

• Harness Open Source: free, Apache 2.0
• Harness Essentials and Enterprise CI: no public price, contact sales

Watch out for:

• Pipeline parity with Drone is described as a long-term goal, not a finished feature, so test your existing .drone.yml files before you plan a cutover.

Official site: Harness Open Source.

GitHub Actions

For code hosted on GitHub, Actions removes the need for a separate CI server and its webhooks. Workflows are YAML, steps can run in containers, and the marketplace covers most deploy targets. Standard runners are free for public repositories.

GitHub now counts included usage in dollars rather than minutes. The Actions billing docs list $12 of compute a month on Free and $18 on Pro and Team. Linux runners cost $0.006 per minute on 2 cores, Windows $0.010 and macOS $0.062.

Best for: Teams on GitHub that want CI with no server to run.

Pricing:

• Free: $12 compute per month, 500 MB artifact storage
• Team: $18 compute per month, 2 GB artifacts, $4 per user per month
• Enterprise Cloud: $300 compute per month
• Self-hosted runners: free

Watch out for:

• macOS minutes cost about ten times Linux minutes, so iOS builds use up the free allowance in under 200 minutes.

Official site: GitHub Actions.

GitLab CI/CD

GitLab builds CI into the same product as repositories, merge requests, the container registry and security scanning. A .gitlab-ci.yml file defines stages and jobs, and you can run your own GitLab Runner on any machine, Docker host or Kubernetes cluster.

On GitLab.com the Free tier gives 400 compute minutes a month and 5 users per private top-level group. Premium is $29 per user per month billed annually.

Best for: Teams that want to replace their Git host and CI at the same time.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 400 compute minutes per month, 5 users per private group
• Premium: $29 per user per month, billed annually
• Ultimate: contact sales

Watch out for:

• Self-managed GitLab is heavy next to Drone. The install requirements give 8 vCPU and 16 GB of RAM as the single-node baseline.

Official site: GitLab CI/CD.

Gitea Actions

Plenty of Drone setups sat next to a self-hosted Gitea server. Gitea now ships its own CI, and the Gitea Actions docs call it similar to and mostly compatible with GitHub Actions, so you can reuse many existing workflows.

Gitea v28.3.0 came out on November 1, 2026. The open source edition is MIT licensed with unlimited users and repositories. For a comparison with Forgejo and other forges, see our Gitea alternatives page.

Best for: Small teams that want Git hosting and CI in one lightweight self-hosted service.

Pricing:

• Open source: free, MIT, unlimited users
• Enterprise: $9.50 and $19 per user per month, 1-year commitment

Watch out for:

• Mostly compatible is not fully compatible. Actions that depend on GitHub-only APIs or hosted runner images may fail and need replacements.

Official site: Gitea Actions.

Buildkite

Buildkite keeps Drone's best idea, that builds run on your machines, and moves the dashboard and scheduling into a hosted service. You install agents on your own servers or cloud instances, and pipelines can generate their steps at runtime.

The Free plan covers up to 5 users, 10 concurrent self-hosted jobs and up to 2,000 hosted vCPU minutes a month. Pro is $30 per active user per month with 10 self-hosted agents included, then $3.50 per agent.

Best for: Growing teams with large monorepos that want to control build hardware.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, up to 5 users, 10 concurrent self-hosted jobs
• Pro: $30 per active user per month, up to 50 users; hosted Linux from $0.004 per vCPU minute
• Enterprise: custom, 30-user minimum

Watch out for:

• Free has no Mac, Windows or Linux ARM64 hosted agents, and test history only lasts 24 hours.

Official site: Buildkite.

CircleCI

CircleCI is a fully hosted option with reusable config packages called orbs and a choice of machine sizes. Billing is in credits: the FAQ example puts a Linux Medium machine at 10 credits a minute.

The Free plan includes 30,000 credits a month, 5 active users and 30 concurrent jobs. Performance starts at $15 a month, and extra credits cost $15 per 25,000.

Best for: Teams that want hosted CI and do not want to run agents.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 30,000 credits per month, 5 users, 5 self-hosted runner tasks
• Performance: from $15 per month, $15 per extra 25,000 credits
• Scale: custom, billed annually

Watch out for:

• Free credits expire each month and do not roll over, so a busy week can stop builds until the next cycle.

Official site: CircleCI.

Jenkins

Jenkins is the opposite of Drone's minimalism. A Java server with thousands of plugins can drive almost any build, from Docker images to embedded firmware on a lab machine. Pipelines are written in a Groovy-based Jenkinsfile.

Releases are frequent: the Jenkins changelog lists weekly version 2.589 from November 1, 2026. It is free and open source, and runs on Windows, Mac or Linux.

Best for: Teams with unusual build hardware or legacy jobs that no hosted service supports.

Pricing:

• Free, MIT licence
• Commercial support is available from third-party vendors

Watch out for:

• Every plugin is another thing to update and secure. Jenkins publishes security advisories for core and plugins, and keeping up is your job.

Official site: Jenkins.

How to choose

When to stay with Drone.io

Keep Drone running if your pipelines are stable, you run the Apache 2.0 Community Edition or hold an Enterprise licence, and nobody needs new features. Container-based steps keep working without changes. Plan the move anyway: development now happens on Harness Open Source's main branch, and the Drone code lives on as a snapshot.

Frequently asked questions