| Loading… |
⚠︎ macOS tax, multipliers and seat limits
macOS CI is expensive everywhere: on GitHub, 10× minute price AND 10× quota multiplier — a 100 min iOS build consumes 1,000 min of quota. CircleCI and Buildkite have the same phenomenon in credits/vCPU pricing. GitLab's 5-user free limit is the category's steepest cliff: the 6th teammate costs 6 × $29 = $174/mo. Your own runners zero out minute billing on all providers that support self-host — a $5/mo VPS can replace hundreds in minute charges (VPS comparison).
How to choose?
For most teams: GitHub Free (2,000 min/mo) goes a long way; public repos get unlimited minutes. Team exceeding quotas: own runners before upgrading tiers. GitLab if you need built-in CI/CD + registry as a package — but calculate the 5-user limit. Open/ethical choice: Codeberg (free, non-profit) — CI without guarantees though. iOS builds: consider your own Mac as a runner; cloud Mac minutes are expensive everywhere.