# Practical Comparison Between the CI/CD Platforms Azure DevOps and GitHub
## 6 Pricing and Cost Considerations

Table 4: Pricing and cost model comparison. Azure DevOps follows a per-user pricing model, where additional users beyond the free five-user limit require paid licenses. Organizations can also purchase self-hosted pipeline agents, allowing them to run CI/CD jobs on their infrastructure at a reduced cost compared to Microsoft-hosted agents. GitHub's pricing structure is tier-based, with three primary plans: Free, Team, and Enterprise. The Free plan supports unlimited public and private repositories but limits CI/CD execution time. The Team plan introduces collaborative features, security enforcement tools, and better repository management at a fixed per-user price. The Enterprise plan is designed for large-scale organizations, offering advanced security features, compliance management, and dedicated support. Unlike Azure DevOps' modular pricing, GitHub's Enterprise Cloud is charged per user monthly, bundling security tools, CI/CD execution, and advanced collaboration features together. While this simplifies pricing, it also means that organizations may incur costs for features they do not actively use, potentially leading to inefficiencies for specific DevOps teams. One of the most critical pricing considerations in any DevOps platform is the cost of running CI/CD pipelines, as build and deployment operations consume compute resources that are billed based on execution time, concurrency, and the type of runner used. Azure DevOps offers 1800 free pipeline minutes per month for public repositories, while private repositories incur a charge for additional execution time. Organizations needing concurrent jobs or self-hosted agents must purchase additional pipeline execution capacity. The cost structure is influenced by the type of virtual machines used, with Linux-based builds being cheaper than Windows or macOS builds. GitHub Actions offers a different pricing model, granting free CI/CD minutes but applying limits based on the subscription tier. GitHub Free users receive 2000 CI/CD minutes monthly, while GitHub Pro and Enterprise users receive higher quotas and priority execution access. Organizations that use self-hosted runners can reduce costs by executing CI/CD workflows on their own hardware or cloud infrastructure rather than relying on GitHub's hosted runners. However, GitHub Actions charges differently based on the runner's operating system, with macOS runners being significantly more expensive than Linux-based or Windows-based runners [30; 31; 34]. A key cost consideration is that Azure DevOps provides more flexible pricing for self-hosted pipelines, allowing organizations to reduce CI/CD execution costs if they have their own cloud or on-premises infrastructure. GitHub Actions, while allowing self-hosted runners, is still more expensive for enterprises that require extensive pipeline execution at scale due to GitHub's higher cost-per-minute pricing model for cloud-hosted runners. For enterprises, security, compliance, and scalability features are crucial when evaluating the financial impact of adopting a DevOps platform. GitHub Advanced Security, which includes code scanning, secret scanning, and Dependabot security alerts, is only available under GitHub Enterprise Cloud, requiring organizations to purchase the highest-tier plan to access these features. Similarly, GitHub Enterprise Server, an on-premises version of GitHub, requires custom pricing and additional infrastructure costs, making it less cost-effective for organizations that need private repository hosting with advanced security capabilities. Azure DevOps provides enterprise-grade security and compliance by integrating with Microsoft security services. Organizations requiring advanced governance policies, custom compliance configurations, and premium security analytics may need additional Azure services, such as Microsoft Defender for DevOps, Azure Policy, and Azure Sentinel, all of which incur additional costs.