IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Developer platform › CI/CD › Small business › September 2026 Edition

CI/CD platforms for small business buyers

Asked as “CI/CD platform”, and as “continuous integration and delivery tool”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 44 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
GitHub Actions
Clear leader
93% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessGitHub Actions93%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketGitHub Actions65%Clear leaderStanding →EnterpriseGitLab CI/CD44%Clear leaderStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01GitHub Actions93%3%68endorsed leader
02GitLab CI/CD5%13%67accepted challenger
03CircleCI2%22%60accepted challenger
Show the six products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
09Jenkins0%75%56criticized challenger
08JetBrains TeamCity0%40%10criticized challenger
07Azure DevOps0%36%11criticized challenger
06Bitbucket Pipelines0%31%13criticized challenger
04Buildkite0%6%16accepted challenger
05DeployHQ0%0%13accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
GitHub Actions vs GitLab CI/CDGitHub Actions vs CircleCIGitLab CI/CD vs CircleCI

One product takes 93% of first choices here, so the chart would put eight markers in one corner and one at the far edge. The two measurements it plots are columns in the standing above: share, and the negative label rate. Four products carry a negative rate above 25% in this category. Jump to the standing

02What they warned about

Nine of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small and Llama 4 Maverick changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Jenkins
75%
42 of 56 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 14 hard negative
“Here are the platforms you should **avoid**... **Why to Avoid/Caution:** Jenkins requires a dedicated sysadmin-level skill set to manage.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
CircleCI
22%
13 of 60 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“heavy usage\u2011based pricing that can spiral (CircleCI, AWS CodeBuild, Azure Pipelines)” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
GitLab CI/CD
13%
9 of 67 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“What to Avoid on a Tight Budget: GitLab Premium ... it can be a massive budget trap for growing small teams” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt
Travis CI
57%
4 of 7 labels negative · 4 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Avoid or be extra cautious with platforms that have a history of sudden pricing changes (Travis CI, GitLab Premium)” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

59 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 601 links across 159 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

deployhq.com
vendor site · DeployHQ36 answers · 36 citations · 10 models
toolradar.com
35 answers · 53 citations · 9 models
saaspedia.dev
35 answers · 35 citations · 9 models
devopsness.com
19 answers · 19 citations · 8 models
blog.jetbrains.com
17 answers · 20 citations · 8 models
checkthat.ai
17 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
dev.to
16 answers · 19 citations · 8 models
devopsplatforms.com
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
atlassian.com
vendor site · Atlassian11 answers · 11 citations · 7 models
awsquality.com
11 answers · 11 citations · 7 models
circleci.com
vendor site · CircleCI10 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
cicdcalculator.com
10 answers · 11 citations · 5 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

deployhq.com/blog/best-ci-cd-software-top-10-tools-to-know-in-2025
35 answers · 10 models
saaspedia.dev/posts/best-ci-cd-platforms
35 answers · 9 models
toolradar.com/blog/best-ci-cd-tools
30 answers · 9 models
devopsness.com/blog/best-cicd-platforms
19 answers · 8 models
checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-ci-cd-tools
17 answers · 9 models
toolradar.com/best/ci-cd/for/small-businesses
17 answers · 8 models
blog.jetbrains.com/teamcity/2026/03/best-ci-tools
13 answers · 8 models
devopsplatforms.com/buying-guides/best-ci-cd-platforms
13 answers · 8 models
awsquality.com/best-ci-cd-tools-what-the-data-actually-shows
11 answers · 7 models
dev.to/_d7eb1c1703182e3ce1782/best-cicd-pipeline-for-small-teams-a-practica…
11 answers · 6 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best CI/CD platform for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which continuous integration and delivery tool would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top CI/CD platforms for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best CI/CD platform for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a CI/CD platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which CI/CD platforms should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5CircleCI, GitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsChanged
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCI, JenkinsGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
One alternativeCircleCI
against: Jenkinsno first choiceagainst: Jenkinsagainst: Bitbucket Pipelines, CloudBees CI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Nortal
GPT-5.4 miniGitHub Actions
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: Bitbucket Pipelines, JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
Three alternativesAzure Pipelines, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
Two alternativesBitbucket Pipelines, GitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCI, Jenkinsno first choiceagainst: CircleCI
Gemini 3.5 FlashGitHub Actions
Six alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Heroku, Railway, Render, Vercel
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Five alternativesBitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, DeployHQ, GitLab CI/CD, Vercel
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Five alternativesCircleCI, Gitea, Ubicloud, WarpBuild, Woodpecker CI
against: GitLab CI/CDGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
One alternativeCircleCI
against: Jenkinsagainst: AWS CodePipeline, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Harness, Jenkins, Spinnaker, Travis CI
Perplexity SonarGitHub Actions
Four alternativesCircleCI, DeployHQ, GitLab CI/CD, Semaphore
GitHub ActionsHeld
Three alternativesAWS CodePipeline, GitLab CI/CD, Semaphore
GitHub Actions
Three alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Semaphore
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: Jenkinsno first choiceagainst: Azure Pipelines, Buildbot, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Spinnaker, Tekton, Zuul
Grok 4.1 FastGitHub Actions
Three alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Semaphore
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCI, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity, SemaphoreGitHub Actions
Three alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: Jenkinsagainst: Azure DevOps, Buildkite, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
Mistral SmallGitHub Actions
Three alternativesGitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
no first choiceChangedGitHub Actions
Four alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Semaphore
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesDeployHQ, Jenkins
no first choiceagainst: Argo Workflows, Codefresh, Harness, Jenkins, Tekton
DeepSeek V4 FlashGitHub Actions
Five alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, DeployHQ, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
GitHub ActionsHeld
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCIGitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI
against: Argo, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Tektonagainst: Atlassian Bamboo, CircleCI, Jenkins, Spinnaker, Travis CI
Llama 4 MaverickGitHub Actions
One alternativeDeployHQ
no first choiceChangedGitHub Actions
Five alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Semaphore
GitHub Actionsagainst: CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, JenkinsGitHub Actionsagainst: Azure DevOps, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
Qwen 3.7 FlashGitHub Actions
Two alternativesAzure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesDeployHQ, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Three alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Travis CI
against: Jenkinsagainst: AWS CodePipeline, Atlassian Bamboo, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, Jenkins, Travis CI
Kimi K2GitHub Actions
Three alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
GitHub ActionsHeld
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
GitHub Actions
Three alternativesBitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Three alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Ionic Appflow, Jenkins, Microsoft App Center
GLM 4.7 FlashXGitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Six alternativesAzure Pipelines, Bitbucket Pipelines, Buildkite, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, JetBrains TeamCity
against: Harness, JenkinsGitHub Actions
Three alternativesBuildkite, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
against: Bitbucket PipelinesGitHub Actions
Six alternativesBuildkite, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, Northflank, Porter, Qovery
against: Azure DevOps, CircleCI, CloudBees CI, IBM UrbanCode, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
MiniMax M2.5GitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub ActionsHeld
Four alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
GitHub Actions
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitHub Actions
Two alternativesGitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
no first choiceagainst: AWS CodeBuild, Azure Pipelines, Bitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Travis CI
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:40no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:25no08 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:48yes919 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:34yes196 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:47yes108 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:28yes53 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:27yes812 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:34yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:28yes1049 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:49yes1433 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:48yes1041 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:28yes924 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:35no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:25yes36 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:32yes1120 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:47yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:36yes137 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:34no02 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:38yes811 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:35yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:31yes546 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:33yes1032 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:46yes1023 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:42no068 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:22yes910 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:29yes517 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:22yes1124 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:44yes206 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:25yes148 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:43yes511 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:41yes1010 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:43yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:32yes522 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:40yes1028 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:34yes1760 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:44yes525 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:36no05 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:38no03 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:29yes2224 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:28yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:26yes159 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:35yes53 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:32yes911 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:26yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:32yes541 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:21yes526 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:52yes15421 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:23yes528 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:43no08 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:35no010 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:42yes1123 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:43yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:49yes1410 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:21no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:36yes918 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:25yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:37no043 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:38yes1031 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:32yes9106 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:32no012 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:34yes1710 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:28yes59 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:43yes2223 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:35yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:38yes229 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:25yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:44yes3525 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:34yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:45no042 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:38yes1940 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:33yes2841 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:41yes2576 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
CloudBees read as CloudBees CI
GitLab read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI (Premium/Ultimate) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI (SaaS) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Premium read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab self-managed read as GitLab CI/CD
Unresolved, counted raw
Appcircle
Blacksmith
Codeship
Copado
Envoyer
NX
Nortal
Porter
Ubicloud
WarpBuild
Zuul
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in developer platform

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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