CircleCI vs Temporal: Pricing Comparison 2026
Side-by-side pricing comparison of CircleCI and Temporal. See all plans, features, and costs at a glance.
Bottom line: CircleCI starts at $15/mo, making it $85/mo cheaper than Temporal ($100/mo). CircleCI offers a free plan.
Last updated: July 6, 2026
CircleCI vs Temporal: Quick Pricing Facts
| Feature | CircleCI | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $15/mo | $100/mo |
| Number of Plans | 3 | 3 |
| Free Tier | Yes | No |
| Pricing Model | usage-based | usage-based |
| Annual Discount | N/A | N/A |
CircleCI is the more affordable option, starting at $15/mo compared to Temporal's $100/mo. Both are Dev Tools with 6 combined pricing plans and 40 features compared.
CircleCI stands out with a free plan for getting started.
Review the detailed tier-by-tier comparison above to see exactly which features are included at each price point and find the best fit for your Dev Tools needs.
| Pricing Plans | CircleCI Try free | Temporal Try free |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Free $0/monthCheapest | Essentials $100/month Includes
|
| Tier 2 | Performance $15/monthCheapest | BusinessPopular $500/month Includes
|
| Tier 3 | Scale Custom pricing | Enterprise Custom pricing Includes
|
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Which Should You Choose?
Choose CircleCI if:
- •You need CI/CD pipeline automation for builds, tests, and deployments
- •Automated release workflows triggered by Git are the primary need
- •Your team requires build infrastructure for shipping software
Choose Temporal if:
- •You need a durable workflow engine for long-running business processes and distributed transactions
- •Temporal's fault-tolerant, resumable workflows handle failures, retries, and state persistence
- •You want to orchestrate complex multi-step application logic that must survive failures
Temporal is an application workflow orchestration engine - it runs durable, fault-tolerant processes inside your application. CircleCI is a CI/CD platform that builds and deploys that application. They operate at completely different layers. Temporal Cloud starts at $25/month; self-hosted is open source. CircleCI starts free; paid from $15/month. A team building with Temporal uses CircleCI to deploy their Temporal workers and services.
Frequently Asked Questions: CircleCI vs Temporal
Which is cheaper, CircleCI or Temporal?
How many pricing plans does CircleCI have vs Temporal?
Does CircleCI or Temporal offer a free plan?
What is the most popular Temporal plan?
Does CircleCI or Temporal offer custom enterprise pricing?
How do CircleCI and Temporal compare for Dev Tools?
Sources
- CircleCI Official Pricing- Vendor pricing page
- Temporal Official Pricing- Vendor pricing page
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