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CircleCI vs Travis CI 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)
Travis CI
Ranking in Build Automation
20th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Travis CI is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CircleCI3.3%
Travis CI1.9%
Other94.8%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

RA
Global Head - DevOps and AIOps Startegist 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.
Pravar Agrawal - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior SRE at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"It's a stable product."
"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."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment."
"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."
 

Cons

"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."
"I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved."
"Billing is a mess."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"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."
"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user195582 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer at Code Drop Pty Ltd
Nov 17, 2016
Bamboo vs. Travis CI vs. Circle CI vs. Codeship
Continuous integration is a hot topic across the web right now and most conferences have at least a few devops talks that touch on CI and build tools. They usually go something along the lines of, use Phing with Jenkins and touch on the fact that Jenkins used to be called Hudson, has been…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?
I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.
What needs improvement with Travis CI?
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user...
What is your primary use case for Travis CI?
Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis workflows are integrated with any changes in my code. It will have different jobs, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, GitHub and others in Build Automation. Updated: December 2025.
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