# Alternatives to Drone

Container-native CI (now Harness).

Drone ranks #7 of 7 in CI/CD platforms, with an Alt Score of 55. It is licensed under Apache-2.0 (Community Edition); Drone Non-Commercial License (Enterprise Edition), open source with paid hosting from $300/month (10 developers) and available on Linux and Windows. 8 of 10 checklist rows are verified against a public source.

Source: https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/drone/
Category: CI/CD platforms

## Overview

- **Who it's for**: Development teams that want a self-hostable, container-native CI/CD platform as an alternative to Jenkins-style CI, especially teams already standardized on Docker.
- **What you get**: A CI/CD server where every pipeline step runs in its own Docker container, configured with a YAML file checked into the repo. It integrates with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Gitea, supports Linux (x64/ARM/ARM64) and Windows runners, and has a plugin ecosystem of container-based steps (Docker builds, Kubernetes deploys, notifications, etc.). It can be run as a hosted cloud service or self-hosted on your own infrastructure.
- **How it works**: A webhook from your git provider triggers Drone to read the pipeline's YAML file, then Drone schedules each defined step as a separate Docker container, passing data between steps via a shared workspace volume.

## Profile

- **License**: Apache-2.0 (Community Edition); Drone Non-Commercial License (Enterprise Edition) (verified 2026-07-09)
- **Pricing model**: OSS + paid hosting (verified 2026-07-09)
- **Starts at**: $300/month (10 developers) (verified 2026-07-09)
- **Platforms**: Linux, Windows
- **Status**: active (verified 2026-07-09)

## Ranked alternatives

| # | App | Alt Score | Licence | Platforms |
|---|-----|-----------|---------|-----------|
| 1 | [CircleCI](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/circleci.md) | 96 | Proprietary | Web |
| 2 | [Semaphore](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/semaphore.md) | 86 | Apache 2.0 (Community Edition); commercial license (Enterprise Edition) | Web, Linux |
| 3 | [Buildkite](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/buildkite.md) | 82 | ? | Web, Linux, macOS, Windows |
| 4 | [TeamCity](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/teamcity.md) | 82 | Proprietary | Windows, Linux, macOS, Web |
| 5 | [Woodpecker CI](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/woodpecker-ci.md) | 82 | Apache-2.0 | Linux, Windows, macOS, Web |
| 6 | [Jenkins](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/jenkins.md) | 68 | MIT | Linux, Windows, macOS, Web |

Alt Score = Verified coverage (90%) + Visibility (10%). See https://altcatalog.com/how-alt-score-works/

## Feature comparison

Legend: Yes / No / Partial / ? (not verified).

| CI/CD platforms checklist | Drone | CircleCI | Semaphore | Buildkite | TeamCity | Woodpecker CI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | OSS + paid hosting | Freemium | Usage-based | Freemium | Freemium | Free |
| Starts at | $300/month (10 developers) | Free | $0.003/min (Ubuntu ARM 2vCPU) | Free | €2,399/year | Free |
| License | Apache-2.0 (Community Edition); Drone Non-Commercial License (Enterprise Edition) | Proprietary | Apache 2.0 (Community Edition); commercial license (Enterprise Edition) | ? | Proprietary | Apache-2.0 |
| Platforms | Linux, Windows | Web | Web, Linux | Web, Linux, macOS, Windows | Windows, Linux, macOS, Web | Linux, Windows, macOS, Web |
| Free tier minutes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Self-hostable runners | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pipeline as code | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Matrix builds | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Caching quality | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Container-native | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secrets management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Marketplace / plugins | ? | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Concurrency limits | No | Partial | Partial | No | Yes | Yes |
| Debugging (SSH into runner) | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Partial |

## Sources

Sources for Drone. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.

- **Pricing model**: OSS + paid hosting — <https://drone.io/enterprise/opensource/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: Community Edition free/OSS; Enterprise Edition paid, from $300/month.
  - Quote: “OSS Pricing Free License Apache 2.0”
- **Platforms**: Linux, Windows — <https://drone.io/enterprise/opensource/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “Platforms Linux x64 Linux armv7 Linux armv8 Windows x86”
- **License**: Apache-2.0 (Community Edition); Drone Non-Commercial License (Enterprise Edition) — <https://github.com/harness/gitness/blob/drone/LICENSE> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “The Drone Community Edition is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 ... The Drone Enterprise Edition is licensed under the Drone Non-Commercial License.”
- **Status**: active — <https://github.com/harness/gitness/commits/drone> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: Maintained as the drone branch of harness/gitness.
  - Quote: “2026-04-20 fix: [CI-22051]: upgraded go-scm to fix bitbucket permission issue (#5184)”
- **Starts at**: $300/month (10 developers) — <https://drone.io/enterprise/monthly/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “$300 / month ... Choose the number of Developers: 10 developers”
- **Free tier minutes**: No — <https://drone.io/enterprise/opensource/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: Self-hosted; OSS edition free with no minute limits, no hosted free-minute quota.
  - Quote: “OSS Pricing Free”
- **Self-hostable runners**: Yes — <https://docs.drone.io/runner/overview/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “Drone runners poll the server for workloads to execute. … You can install one or many runners, of one or many types.”
- **Pipeline as code**: Yes — <https://docs.drone.io/pipeline/overview/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “Pipelines are configured by placing a .drone.yml file in the root of your git repository.”
- **Matrix builds**: Partial — <https://docs.drone.io/pipeline/docker/syntax/parallelism/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: Parallel steps via DAG / multiple pipelines; no dedicated matrix keyword.
  - Quote: “You can optionally describe your build steps as a directed acyclic graph. In the below example we fan-out to execute the first two steps in parallel”
- **Container-native**: Yes — <https://github.com/harness/gitness/blob/drone/.github/readme.md> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “Drone is a continuous delivery system built on container technology. Drone uses a simple YAML build file, to define and execute build pipelines inside Docker containers.”
- **Secrets management**: Yes — <https://docs.drone.io/secret/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Quote: “Per Repository Store and manage sensitive information per-repository. … Encrypted Store sensitive information as encrypted strings in your configuration file. External Retrieve sensitive information f”
- **Concurrency limits**: No — <https://drone.io/enterprise/opensource/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: No explicit concurrency limits; bounded only by runners deployed.
  - Quote: “OSS Pricing Free ... Clustering Single Machine Multi-Machine, Agents Multi-Machine, Kubernetes”
- **Debugging (SSH into runner)**: Partial — <https://docs.drone.io/runner/ssh/overview/> (verified 2026-07-09)
  - Note: SSH runner type executes on a remote host; not an interactive drop-into-failed-build feature.
  - Quote: “The SSH runner executes pipeline commands on a static, remote server using the SSH protocol.”

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Ranked by verified data, never by who paid. https://altcatalog.com/trust/