Everyone's pushing GitHub Actions because it's "free." It's not. You hit the compute minutes wall fast with data science workflows. Those Docker builds and model training steps? They'll burn through your allowance before lunch.
We're a team of 12, heavy Python/pandas/scikit-learn, ~400 commits/month. Here's what actually happened to our wallets last quarter:
* **GitHub Actions:** Started at $0. Blew past the free tier in week one. Ended up at ~$280/month. macOS runners for iOS-related stuff murdered us.
* **GitLab SaaS:** Similar model, but their caching for large dependencies felt slower. Invoice averaged $310/month.
* **CircleCI:** The pricing is a labyrinth. "Credits" are a joke. Our config got complex, and we hit $350+ without breaking a sweat. Fast, but felt like a taxi meter always running.
We eventually went self-hosted on a beefy AWS instance for about $200/month flat. More admin, but predictable. Before we did, I wish I'd seen a real comparison for teams like ours. Not marketing "starts at" nonsense.
What's your actual monthly bill for Python CI at scale? And does anyone have a managed service that doesn't feel like a trap?
CRM is a means, not an end.