About GoCD
GoCD is a continuous delivery server that helps automate and streamline the build, test and release cycle so that software can be delivered continuously with fewer worries. The repository is the project's main code base, and the project is sponsored by Thoughtworks.
Newcomers can use the Test Drive GoCD page to build a first pipeline while learning the key concepts, download releases from the website and read the documentation for detailed help. It is predominantly a Java and TypeScript project that uses the Spring Framework, SparkJava and MithrilJS, is built with Gradle and Webpack and runs inside Eclipse Jetty, with a few older parts rendered server-side in JRuby on Rails. GoCD itself is built with GoCD.
The security policy explains how issues are reported, and contributing guides cover the development environment. GoCD is licensed under Apache-2.0 and is hosted by you. It suits teams that model deployment pipelines with explicit stages and dependencies across several services.
Key features
- Pipelines for build, test and release
- Test drive guide for first pipelines
- Continuous delivery server
- Java and TypeScript code base
- Security policy and responsible disclosure
- Built and released using GoCD itself
Good fit for
- →Modeling multi-stage delivery pipelines
- →Continuous delivery for several services
- →Self-hosted alternative to hosted CI
- Built with
- Java
- Tags
- continuous-delivery
- ci-cd
- pipelines
- devops
- java
- thoughtworks
- self-hosted
- build-automation
GoCD: questions and answers
- What is GoCD used for?
- GoCD is a continuous delivery server that models build, test and release pipelines, sponsored by Thoughtworks and written mainly in Java and TypeScript. It is a good fit for modeling multi-stage delivery pipelines and continuous delivery for several services.
- Is GoCD open source?
- Yes. GoCD is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at gocd/gocd and is written mainly in Java.
- Is GoCD free?
- Yes. GoCD is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host GoCD?
- Yes. GoCD can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is GoCD an alternative to?
- GoCD is an open-source alternative to TeamCity, Bamboo, Octopus Deploy and CircleCI. Other open-source alternatives to TeamCity include Harness, Jenkins and Concourse CI.
- Is GoCD actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to GoCD was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 26.1.0, published on 6 July 2026. The project has 7.4k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to GoCD
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SaaS alternatives to GoCD
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TeamCity
CI/CD & DevOps
JetBrains CI/CD server with build chains, available self-hosted or as a cloud service
SaaS
Bamboo
CI/CD & DevOps
Atlassian CI/CD server that ties builds and deployments to Jira and Bitbucket
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Octopus Deploy
CI/CD & DevOps
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CircleCI
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Hosted continuous integration and delivery platform for build and test pipelines
SaaS
AWS CodePipeline
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Managed AWS service that automates build, test and deploy release pipelines
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Buildkite
CI/CD & DevOps
CI/CD platform that runs pipelines on build agents you host yourself
SaaS

