Plain vs CircleCI.
CircleCI runs builds and runs them well. It also knows nothing about why: the issue behind the change, the discussion behind the issue, or the docs behind the design. It is a metered engine bolted to someone else's repository. Plain CI starts the instant you push your Plain-hosted code, with warm runners and an org-wide cache, included in the seat.
// Coverage
CircleCI does one job. Plain is the whole setup.
Seven surfaces every software team ends up paying for, one way or another. Here is what each product actually covers.
| Surface | CircleCI | Plain |
|---|---|---|
| Code hosting | Not included | Included |
| Issue tracking | Not included | Included |
| Docs & wiki | Not included | Included |
| Team chat | Not included | Included |
| CI / CD | Included | Included |
| Packages | Partialbuild artifacts only | Included |
| AI agents | Not included | Included |
CircleCI fully covers 1 of the seven surfaces. Plain covers all seven on one seat.
// Credit where due
Where CircleCI is genuinely good.
- It is mature, reliable CI with strong caching, parallelism, and debugging tools like SSH into a failed job.
- Orbs make common pipeline patterns reusable instead of copy-pasted.
- Being Git-host agnostic is genuinely useful if your repositories are scattered.
The catch.
Standalone CI means usage bills that grow with your success and pipelines defined in YAML that lives apart from the code it tests. Every run pays the integration tax: checking out from one vendor, reporting status to another, alerting a third. Plain pipelines are composable code in the same repository, runners are already warm, and the failure lands in the chat thread of the PR that caused it.
// Pricing
One seat price vs a stack of them.
CircleCI
~$30/ user / mo
Covers CI / CD. The other surfaces are other tools, other invoices.
Typical usage-based spend for an active team, not a list price. Credits scale with build volume.
Plain Pro
$24/ user / mo
Code, issues, docs, chat, CI, packages, and AI agents on every seat. One bill, one search index, one source of truth.
// FAQ
Common questions.
- Is Plain a CircleCI alternative?
- Yes. Plain CI runs pipelines on push with zero cold start, an org-wide shared cache, and pipelines defined as composable code rather than YAML, included in the per-seat price.
- Do I have to host code on Plain to use Plain CI?
- Plain CI is built around Plain-hosted repositories; that integration is where the speed comes from. You can mirror from another host while you migrate.
- How does Plain pricing compare to CircleCI?
- CircleCI bills usage credits, which for an active team commonly lands around $30 per user per month and varies with build volume. Plain Pro is $24 flat with 3,000 CI minutes per user included.
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