What is Azure Pipelines used for?

Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD service in Azure DevOps for building, testing and deploying code to any cloud or platform. It is a good fit for building and testing multi-platform projects, and automating releases to Azure and other clouds.

Is Azure Pipelines free?

Yes. Azure Pipelines has a free plan.

Is Azure Pipelines open source?

No. Azure Pipelines is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Azure Pipelines include Jenkins, Concourse CI and Woodpecker CI.

Can I self-host Azure Pipelines?

Yes. Although Azure Pipelines is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Azure Pipelines?

Azure Pipelines competes with GitHub Actions, CircleCI and GitLab. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure Pipelines alternatives.

Azure Pipelines: features, pricing and alternatives

About Azure Pipelines

Azure Pipelines is a cloud-based continuous integration and delivery service that is part of Azure DevOps. It builds and tests code on Linux, macOS and Windows agents and deploys the results to any cloud or on-premises target, so it is not limited to Microsoft's own platform.

The service supports pipelines defined as code and works with code stored in a variety of repositories. Microsoft's page highlights a free allowance of parallel jobs for cloud-hosted pipelines, with options for more parallelism or self-hosted agents when teams need to scale beyond that.

Azure Pipelines is a commercial service with a free tier for smaller use, and it is aimed at teams that want one place for build, test and release automation. It is a particularly close fit for organizations that already use Azure, GitHub or other Microsoft developer tools. Current details are on the Azure pricing pages.

Key features

Cloud-hosted CI/CD pipelines
Build agents for Linux, macOS and Windows
Deploy to any cloud or on-premises target
Free allowance of parallel jobs
Part of the Azure DevOps suite

Good fit for

→Building and testing multi-platform projects
→Automating releases to Azure and other clouds

Tags: ci-cd; azure-devops; pipelines; continuous-integration; microsoft; deployment

Azure Pipelines: questions and answers

What is Azure Pipelines used for?: Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD service in Azure DevOps for building, testing and deploying code to any cloud or platform. It is a good fit for building and testing multi-platform projects, and automating releases to Azure and other clouds.
Is Azure Pipelines free?: Yes. Azure Pipelines has a free plan.
Is Azure Pipelines open source?: No. Azure Pipelines is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Azure Pipelines include Jenkins, Concourse CI and Woodpecker CI.
Can I self-host Azure Pipelines?: Yes. Although Azure Pipelines is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Azure Pipelines?: Azure Pipelines competes with GitHub Actions, CircleCI and GitLab. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Azure Pipelines alternatives.