Semaphore
by Semaphore · Open-source CI/CD billed per build minute, set up through a coding agent
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Semaphore
Homepage
Overview
Semaphore is a continuous integration and delivery platform that runs pipelines on hosted Ubuntu ARM, Ubuntu x64 and macOS machines, or on self-hosted ones. It is built to be set up and maintained by a coding agent: a CLI install lets the agent configure CI, run checks in a production-identical sandbox before a push, and flag slow or flaky steps. The source is open.
- Best for
- Teams wanting pay-per-minute CI/CD they can drive from a coding agent, with a self-host option
- Pricing
- Each organisation gets $15 of free credits a month, then pays per machine minute from $0.003/min (Ubuntu ARM 2 vCPU) up to $0.09/min (macOS 4 vCPU), with optional support plans from $50/month.
- Runs on
- WebSelf-hosted
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Pay per build minute; $15 of free credits every month
- Open source, self-hostable at $0.0025/min on any machine
- No per-seat or per-user fees; 20 concurrent jobs by default
- SOC 2 Type II, SAML SSO, role-based access and audit logs
Trade-offs
- Support beyond basic setup help costs $50–$750/month on top of compute
- Annual discount figures are not published; you must contact support
- Dedicated cache and private Docker registry are $400/month each
- Artifact egress over 20 GB/month is billed at $0.35/GB
How Semaphore markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Semaphore’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Tell your agent what you want. It runs your CI.”
- Angle: AI-native
- Hero: Terminal / CLI
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Semaphore’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Pricing transparency
Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Semaphore pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
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