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Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

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11–20 of 176 posts

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#11
post #6

They sort of hang themselves with this -- gitlab runners will occasionally hang and just run for the full 1 hour max, making it very easy to max out your hours. Presumably they don't fix this so people max out their hours and have to buy more, but it also hurts the bottom line of their free tier. I see this happen at least 2x a month on our project, and it doesn't seem to correspond with any particular docker image.

Can you raise an issue in the GitLab Runner project? This way we can take a closer look at the errors you have experienced.

And no, we don't do this on purpose in order to have you buy more minutes.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-runner/-/issues

Darren Eastman - Product Manager GitLab Runner

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#13

Metering of services like this only makes sense for organizations that don't have the time or expertise or desire to maintain the open source, self-hosted version themselves. Raspi and similar devices will some day hopefully rid the world of this tyranny of having to trust a website like this and pay them for eternity and hope they dont go down and hope they dont raise prices (oops) and hope they dont obfuscate prici…

Well you can already self host Gitlab on your own server if you want.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#14
post #12

This is only about seven builds per month for my Rust project, not too bad but something I'll have to keep in mind. Does anyone else think this is a Gitlab campaign against overuse of monomorphization in Rust projects? I just can't get myself to use Dyn...

> Does anyone else think this is a Gitlab campaign against overuse of monomorphization in Rust projects? I just can't get myself to use Dyn...

I presume this is some kind of joke. If not, why on earth would GitLab campaign against the use of dyn types? GitLab doesn't even use Rust.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#15
post #4

$4/mo for 2000 minutes is reasonable. GitHub Actions does 2000 minutes for free/3000 minutes for $4, wonder if they'll drop their free tier a bit without the competition.

Alas, I doubt they care much. Post-Microsoft-acquisition-GitHub is playing a different game.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#16
Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#17

Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable.

You can also run your own CI/CD runner for free and use their platform for coordination. I do this and it works well, as easy as running a docker image. Runs on my homelab.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#18

Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable.

You can also run your own CI/CD runner for free and use their platform for coordination. I do this and it works well, as easy as running a docker image. Runs on my homelab.

Will also run on a Synology NAS using Docker (I do this).

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#19

Their existing policy has never made sense to me. You can only give away so much stuff on a free plan. I don't think CI/CD is cheap. Buying extra minutes for $10 (not per month) is completely reasonable. At some point I feel uncomfortable using a free plan that is obviously unsustainable.

Business models which leverage network effects often subsidize things to build out a network. I wouldn't feel bad about it.

That said, this move seems 100% reasonable. I care about having a free tier. If they were killing the free tier, I'd be sad. But if I'm not paying anything, I'm okay being required to make my CI/CD pipeline efficient for my benefactor. I'd even take less than 400, gladly.

Re: Gitlab reducing free tier CI/CD minutes from 2000 to 400 minutes

#20
post #13

Metering of services like this only makes sense for organizations that don't have the time or expertise or desire to maintain the open source, self-hosted version themselves. Raspi and similar devices will some day hopefully rid the world of this tyranny of having to trust a website like this and pay them for eternity and hope they dont go down and hope they dont raise prices (oops) and hope they dont obfuscate prici…

Well you can already self host Gitlab on your own server if you want.

I honestly don't understand what he is complaining about.
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