Yes, AWS CodeBuild has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans.
About
AWS CodeBuild is a managed build service that compiles, tests, and packages code without requiring teams to provision or maintain their own build servers. It automatically scales build capacity based on demand, helping development teams run software builds more efficiently.
The service is designed for modern CI/CD workflows and integrates with common source control and delivery pipelines. It supports prepackaged build environments as well as custom environments, making it suitable for a range of software delivery needs.
- Managed build and test execution for source code
- Automatic scaling to reduce build queue delays
- Pay-as-you-go usage based on build duration
- Support for CI/CD pipelines and GitHub-based builds
- Prepackaged or custom build environments
Free Tier Value
This free tier is a capped monthly allowance, not an uncapped forever plan, and a credit card is required to create the account. Using the published paid rates, 100 build minutes at $0.005/min is about $0.50 and 6,000 build seconds at $0.00001/sec is about $0.06, so the monthly value is roughly $0.56; rounded conservatively, that’s about $0.53/month. Feature coverage is fairly strong for standard on-demand builds, but it excludes reserved capacity, sandbox, and the Docker image server.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- 100 total build minutes per month with general1.small or arm1.small on-demand Amazon EC2 compute.
- 6,000 total build seconds per month with lambda.arm.1GB or lambda.x86-64.1GB on-demand Lambda compute.
- Available to new and existing AWS customers.
- Does not automatically expire at the end of the 12-month AWS Free Tier term.
See AWS CodeBuild pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
On-demand Amazon EC2
- build minute
- 1 minute billed at $0.005
- build duration
- rounded up to nearest minute
- General-purpose build compute
- Arm build compute
- On-demand builds
- Rounded up to the nearest minute
On-demand AWS Lambda
- build second
- 1 second billed at $0.00001
- build duration
- rounded up to nearest second
- Lambda build compute
- On-demand builds
- Rounded up to the nearest second
Reserved capacity Amazon EC2
- instance minute
- 1 minute billed at $0.003
- minimum usage
- 60 minutes per instance
- Mac minimum usage
- 24 hours
- Reserved capacity fleets
- Mac reserved instances
- Managed NACL option
- Incremental storage
Docker image server
- duration
- billed per second
- cache at rest
- lower charge during cooldown
- Remote image build server
- Shared layer cache
- Cooldown period with cache at rest
- Per-project enablement
Sandbox
- duration
- billed per second
- Interactive sandbox environment
- Per-second billing
- Rounded up to nearest second
Pricing extracted from AWS CodeBuild's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is AWS CodeBuild free forever?
Yes. AWS CodeBuild has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
What happens when you exceed AWS CodeBuild's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. AWS CodeBuild's cheapest paid plan is On-demand AWS Lambda at $0.00001 / month.
What is AWS CodeBuild's free tier worth?
AWS CodeBuild's free tier is worth about <$1 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 36/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
