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CircleCI vs GoCD comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CircleCI
Ranking in Build Automation
16th
Average Rating
6.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (32nd)
GoCD
Ranking in Build Automation
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (17th), Release Automation (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoCD is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GoCD2.0%
CircleCI3.3%
Other94.7%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2785464 - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Automated CI/CD pipelines have transformed deployment speed and collaboration for my teams
CircleCI offers fast parallel builds, easy integration with GitHub, and the ability to deploy applications on Kubernetes pods, which are amazing features. Fast parallel builds and GitHub integration have definitely helped my team reach faster time to market for our applications. Previously, our deployment used to take a couple of hours when doing it manually, but with CircleCI pipeline, our hours-long job has been converted to a couple of minutes. Its simplicity, fast pipeline execution, and strong GitHub and GitLab integrations are definitely unique advantages I discovered while using CircleCI. Time saved is one of the key aspects I have seen since using CircleCI. I have noticed fewer deployment errors, and it has helped me with easy debugging. Time saved is directly proportional to the cost and effort saved. CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by integrating directly with my Git repositories as a fully managed SaaS platform. CircleCI has a great impact on my team's collaboration and communication, with around 25 to 40 developers and DevOps engineers using it daily across multiple repositories and environments, helping us use it at scale. CircleCI has significantly increased our release frequency and deployment speed compared to before I started using it. CircleCI improves security for my organization by enforcing automated checks in the pipeline and securely managing secrets through environment variables while providing auditable deployments. CircleCI integrates seamlessly with my DevOps toolchain by connecting directly to GitHub, container registries, and my cloud platform AWS, allowing the entire CI/CD flow from code commit to deployment and monitoring with minimal manual effort.
RajeshReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at Infosys
The UI is colorful, but the user experience must be improved
We can see all the pipelines with a simple search. The UI is colorful. The user experience is very rich. The product is very easy to learn if we know a bit of the basics. If we have someone to show us how to use it, it is very easy.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, saving substantial engineering hours and effort for me, which has directly improved my productivity and release velocity, reflecting incredible ROI."
"It's a stable product."
"CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment."
"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"The UI is colorful."
"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."
"The most notable aspect is its user interface, which we find to be user-friendly and straightforward for deploying and comprehending pipelines. We have the ability to create multiple pipelines, and in addition to that, the resource consumption is impressive."
"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."
 

Cons

"I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"A return on investment with CircleCI has not been observed, and no relevant metrics such as time saved or fewer employees needed can be shared."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"Billing is a mess."
"It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified."
"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."
"The tool must be more user-friendly."
"The aspect that requires attention is the user management component. When integrating with BitLabs and authenticating through GitLab, there are specific features we desire. One important feature is the ability to import users directly from GitLab, along with their respective designations, and assign appropriate privileges based on that information. Allocating different privileges to users is a time-consuming process for us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."
"It's an open-source and free tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
There is not much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that is managed by the legal team.
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
CircleCI's Orbs are not as easy to use as they could be. If CircleCI implemented a function approach similar to GitHub Actions, it would be significantly better. CircleCI could be improved if it co...
What advice do you have for others considering CircleCI?
For others looking into using CircleCI, study thoroughly about CircleCI's Orbs because they are quite complicated. The overall review rating for CircleCI is 6 out of 10.
What needs improvement with GoCD?
One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be sim...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
Ancestry.com, Barclay Card, AutoTrader, BT Financial Group, Gamesys, Nike, Vodafone, Haufe Lexware, Medidata, Hoovers
Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI vs. GoCD and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.