Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Travis CI VS CircleCI

Compare Travis CI VS CircleCI and see what are their differences

Travis CI logo Travis CI

Simple, flexible, trustworthy CI/CD tools. Join hundreds of thousands who define tests and deployments in minutes, then scale up simply with parallel or multi-environment builds using Travis CI’s precision syntax—all with the developer in mind.

CircleCI logo CircleCI

CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.
  • Travis CI Travis CI for Simple, Flexible, Trustworthy CI/CD Tools
    Travis CI for Simple, Flexible, Trustworthy CI/CD Tools //
    2024-10-22

Founded in Berlin, Germany, in 2011, Travis CI grew quickly and became a trusted name in CI/CD, gaining popularity among software developers and engineers starting their careers. In 2019, Travis CI became part of Idera, Inc., the parent company of global B2B software productivity brands whose solutions enable technical users to work faster and do more with less.

Today, developers at 300,000 organizations use Travis CI. We often hear about the pangs of nostalgia these folks feel when they use Travis CI, as it was one of the first tools they used at the beginning of their career journey. We are still much here, supporting those who have stuck with us along the way and remaining the best next destination on your CI/CD journey, whether you’re building your first pipelines or trying to bring some thrill back into work that’s become overloaded with AI and DevSecOps complexity.

Our Mission:

We deliver the simplest and most flexible CI/CD tool to developers eager for ownership of their code quality, transparency in how they problem-solve with peers, and pride in the results they create—one LOC at a time.

Our Promise:

We aim for nothing less than to guide every developer to the next phase of their CI/CD adventure—even if that means growing beyond our platform.

  • CircleCI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

Travis CI

$ Details
paid Free Trial $13.75 / Monthly (Per Month, Per User)
Release Date
2011 January

CircleCI

$ Details
-
Release Date
2011 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Allen Rohner
Employees
500 - 999

Travis CI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Travis CI offers a very user-friendly interface and straightforward setup process, making it accessible even for those new to CI/CD.
  • Integration with GitHub
    Seamlessly integrates with GitHub, allowing for automatic builds and tests triggered on pull requests and commits.
  • Wide Range of Language Support
    Supports numerous programming languages out of the box, providing built-in configurations for many common languages such as Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Java.
  • Extensive Documentation
    Offers comprehensive and well-organized documentation, which can help users troubleshoot and understand complex setups.
  • Build Matrix
    Run your unit and integration tests across any combination of environments for comprehensive automation and absolute quality guarantees on your way to production.

Possible disadvantages of Travis CI

  • Pricing for Private Repositories
    Can become expensive for private repositories and larger teams, especially compared to some competitors that offer more generous free tiers.
  • Performance Issues
    Users have reported occasional performance issues, including slower build times and longer wait periods for queued jobs.
  • Limited Advanced Features
    Might lack some advanced features and customizations that are available in other CI/CD platforms, making it less suitable for very complex workflows.
  • Concurrency Limits
    Has limitations on the number of concurrent builds that can run, which can slow down development cycles for larger projects with many contributors.
  • Complex Configuration for Large Projects
    Configuration can become cumbersome and complex for large projects with intricate dependencies and multiple build steps.

CircleCI features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    CircleCI offers a user-friendly interface and straightforward configuration, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users.
  • Scalability
    CircleCI easily scales with your project, allowing for flexible resource allocation and handling multiple workflows in parallel.
  • Extensive Integrations
    CircleCI supports a wide range of integrations with various tools and services like GitHub, Bitbucket, Docker, and Slack, enabling seamless workflows.
  • Speed and Performance
    With features like advanced caching, dependency management, and parallelism, CircleCI enables faster builds and quicker feedback cycles.
  • Customizability
    CircleCI provides powerful configuration options through YAML files, allowing users to tailor their CI/CD pipelines to specific project requirements.
  • Free Tier Availability
    CircleCI offers a free plan that includes several features, making it suitable for small projects and open-source contributions.

Possible disadvantages of CircleCI

  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While CircleCI is generally user-friendly, mastering advanced configurations and optimizations can take time and require a deeper understanding of the platform.
  • Cost for Higher Tiers
    The pricing for higher-tier plans can become expensive, especially for large teams or enterprises requiring extensive usage and advanced features.
  • Limited Concurrency in Free Plan
    The free plan has limited concurrent builds, which might not be sufficient for larger projects with high parallelization needs.
  • Occasional Stability Issues
    Users have reported occasional performance and stability issues, particularly during high-demand periods, which can slow down the build process.
  • Configuration Complexity
    If not properly managed, the YAML configuration files can become complex and difficult to maintain for larger projects, leading to potential misconfigurations.

Travis CI videos

Setting Up Your First Build

More videos:

  • Tutorial - CI/CD Core Concepts
  • Tutorial - How to Get Started with Travis CI in 0 to 5 Minutes

CircleCI videos

CircleCI Part 1: Introduction to Unit Testing and Continuous Integration

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Setup CircleCI On Your Next Project (Vue, React, or Angular)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Travis CI and CircleCI)
Continuous Integration
36 36%
64% 64
DevOps Tools
39 39%
61% 61
Continuous Deployment
39 39%
61% 61
Continuous Integration And Delivery

User comments

Share your experience with using Travis CI and CircleCI. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Travis CI and CircleCI

Travis CI Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
Travis CI is another popular cloud-based CI/CD solution that integrates well with GitHub. Known for its simplicity and ease of setup, Travis CI is a great choice for open-source projects or teams that primarily work with GitHub repositories. Its configuration is based on a YAML file, making it easy to define and manage build workflows.
Source: morninglif.com
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
Travis CI is known for its simple setup, quick parallel builds, and support for multiple architectures, including popular enterprise options like IBM PowerPC and IBM Z. It’s claimed that pipelines require approximately 33% less configurable code than other CI/CD solutions, which helps make the platform more approachable. Use it instead of Jenkins when you want a fast...
Source: spacelift.io
10 Jenkins Alternatives in 2021 for Developers
You might find that Travis CI proudly promotes the fact that they have more than 900,000 open-source projects and 600,000 users on their platform with Travis CI. Automated deployment can be quickly established by following the tutorials and documentation that are currently available on their website.
The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
Travis CI is a continuous integration and testing CI/CD tool. It is free of cost for open source projects and provides seamless integration with GitHub. It supports more than 20 languages, like Node.js, PHP, Python, etc. along with Docker.
Continuous Integration. CircleCI vs Travis CI vs Jenkins
Travis CI is recommended for cases when you are working on the open-source projects, that should be tested in different environments.
Source: djangostars.com

CircleCI Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that has gained significant traction in recent years. With a focus on simplicity and ease of use, CircleCI offers a streamlined approach to automating your build, test, and deployment processes. One of its standout features is its strong support for Docker, making it a great choice for teams working with containerized applications.
Source: morninglif.com
Top 5 Jenkins Alternatives in 2024: Automation of IT Infrastructure Written by Uzair Ghalib on the 02nd Jan 2024
CircleCI– Get unparalleled performance and insights with CircleCI’s interactive dashboard and automatic upgrades – revolutionizing the way you build and deploy your applications.
Source: attuneops.io
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
CircleCI can be a Jenkins replacement for teams seeking a managed experience where performance and support options are priorities. CircleCI is also investing heavily in building new capabilities that cater to the pipeline requirements of apps using AI and ML.
Source: spacelift.io
35+ Of The Best CI/CD Tools: Organized By Category
CircleCI is a complete CI/CD pipeline tool. You can monitor the statuses of your various pipelines from your dashboard. Additionally, CircleCI helps you manage your build logs, access controls, and testing. It’s one of the most popular DevOps and CI/CD platforms in the world.
10 Jenkins Alternatives in 2021 for Developers
CircleCI is generally recognized for its flexibility and compatibility. Customization is obviously an important factor when making the switch from Jenkins and CircleCI certainly takes an impressive swing at providing users with a solid collection of features.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CircleCI seems to be a lot more popular than Travis CI. While we know about 77 links to CircleCI, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Travis CI. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Travis CI mentions (6)

  • Front-end Guide
    We used Travis CI for our continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Travis is a highly popular CI on Github and its build matrix feature is useful for repositories which contain multiple projects like Grab's. We configured Travis to do the following:. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Flutter
    CI/CD for autobuild + autotests (Codemagic or Travis CI). Source: over 2 years ago
  • How To Build Your First CI/CD Pipeline With Travis CI?
    Step 2: Log on to Travis CI and sign up with your GitHub account used above. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • What does a DevOps engineer actually do?
    Some other hosted CI products, such as CircleCI and Travis Cl, are completely hosted in the cloud. It is becoming more popular for small organizations to use hosted CI products, as they allow engineering teams to begin continuous integration as soon as possible. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Hosting an Angular application on GitHub Pages using Travis CI
    1. Let's create the account. Access the site https://travis-ci.com/ and click on the button Sign up. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
View more

CircleCI mentions (77)

  • Improving API Performance In Legacy Systems: A Guide for API Developers
    Tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and CircleCI offer capabilities for parallel testing and test caching, allowing multiple tests to run simultaneously. This approach significantly reduces overall testing time and prevents unnecessary delays in deployment. Industry leaders such as Netflix and Amazon employ these practices to minimize outages and maintain high service quality. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Top 17 DevOps AI Tools [2025]
    CircleCI is a leading cloud-based platform for CI/CD that automates the software development process, enabling teams to build, test, and deploy applications with efficiency and precision. By integrating seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, CircleCI enhances collaboration and accelerates development cycles. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Building a serverless GenAI API with FastAPI, AWS, and CircleCI
    GitHub and CircleCI Accounts: You will need a GitHub account to host your project’s repository and a CircleCI account to automate testing and deployment through CI/CD. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • CircleCI vs. Jenkins
    CircleCI is a CI/CD platform that automates the process of building, testing, and deploying software. It helps developers integrate code changes more frequently and efficiently, ensuring that software development teams can detect and fix errors quickly. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • AIOps, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps – What’s the Difference?
    CI/CD tools: Tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab CI to automate the build and deployment pipeline. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Travis CI and CircleCI, you can also consider the following products

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

Codeship - Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Delivery platform that scales with your needs.

Buddy - The simplest CI/CD tool ever made, acclaimed by top developers worldwide. It uses delivery pipelines to build, test and deploy software. Pipelines are created with over 100 ready-to-use actions, that can be arranged in any way.

Azure DevOps - Visual Studio dev tools & services make app development easy for any platform & language. Try our Mac & Windows code editor, IDE, or Azure DevOps for free.

Bitrise - Tens of thousands of agencies, startups and enterprise companies with mobile apps - including Runkeeper, Grindr, Duolingo and more - use Bitrise to automate their way to increased productivity & speed

TeamCity - TeamCity is an ultimate Continuous Integration tool for professionals