TeamCity Cloud Subscription and Licensing
TeamCity Cloud services are provided by a monthly or annual subscription which includes a predefined set of resources. If you reach any of the subscription limits, you can get additional resources on demand.
This document details the terms of a subscription and licensing in TeamCity Cloud. For more information, see our Terms of Service, F.A.Q, or contact us via our issue tracker.
Refer to the licensing glossary to learn about the terms used in this document.
TeamCity Cloud Subscription
Subscription Levels
TeamCity Cloud subscription levels are predominantly based on the number of committers, that are users who make changes in the project code. All users who author 10 or more VCS changes over a 30-day period require a committer slot in TeamCity Cloud. Before acquiring the subscription, we suggest that you estimate the number of potential committers in all projects you are about to run in TeamCity. If you need help choosing the subscription level, contact us for a demo.
Note that only contributors to the source code take the committer slots. An unlimited number of non-committing users (managers, QA, and so on) can get access to the TeamCity web interface.
Each acquired committer slot in the subscription is provided with a fixed amount of storage for build results and data transfer capacity. You also get a number of build credits per each committer: they are automatically spent on build time on agents and can be exchanged for extra build resources when necessary. The more committers you have, the more credits and build resources you are proportionally granted with. Please refer to our website to see the exact rates.
You can manage your subscription on the Subscription & Resources administration page in TeamCity.
Using Build Credits
Build credits are granted to your subscription per each committer and can be flexibly utilized according to your needs. At the end of each month, the remaining build credits expire from your subscription, and a new set of build credits is provided at the beginning of the next month. If you purchase additional build credits, they do not expire.
Build credits are automatically spent on build time on agents. You can also exchange them on:
Committer slots
Concurrent builds on self-hosted agents
Agents prepaid monthly
Extra storage and data transfer capacity
TeamCity Cloud can run builds on two types of agents:
JetBrains-hosted: Each minute of build time on JetBrains-hosted agents will expend a certain number of build credits. The exact rate depends on your build agent instance type.
Alternatively, you can prepay one or more JetBrains-hosted agents on a monthly basis. You can choose a specific type of agent and run an unlimited number of builds on it during the following month. This option can significantly reduce costs if you run builds non-stop. It is also convenient if you don't mind how many builds run in parallel and just want to pay a fixed sum monthly.Self-hosted: In case with self-hosted agents, build time is not counted. Instead, you need to purchase an extra slot for each concurrent build running on a self-hosted agent. For example, if you purchase 3 slots monthly, you would be able to run up to 3 builds on self-hosted agents, connected to your TeamCity server, at each moment of time during this month.
TeamCity will always try to optimize costs spent on a build. If an idle self-hosted agent is available, TeamCity will assign the build to it. If only JetBrains-hosted agents are available and there is an idle prepaid one, it will assign the build to this agent.
Free Trial Subscription
You can try TeamCity Cloud for free for 14 days. The free trial subscription plan includes unlimited committer slots, 12,000 build credits (good for up to 20 build hours on our Linux small instance type), unlimited parallel builds, 120 GB of storage, and up to 3 concurrent self-hosted builds. See the detailed information on our website.
On-demand Cloud Resources
You can get more build credits, atop the ongoing subscription, and spend them on necessary resources. Credits are purchased in packs of 25,000. More information on pricing is available on our website.
Build credits purchased this way do not expire. Similarly to credits provided with your subscription, they are spent on build time on JetBrains-hosted build agents and can be redeemed for additional storage, concurrent builds on self-hosted agents, committers, and prepaid build agents. When you buy a resource, its price for the current month is lowered proportionally to how many days are left in the month.
Note that when you buy an additional resource for build credits, it will be automatically renewed each month (that is, build credits will be automatically spent on it) unless you cancel it. If you cancel a purchased resource, it will only reset at the beginning of the next month.
To acquire credits and manage build resources, use the Subscription & Resources administration page in TeamCity.
Cloud Licensing Terminology
Build credits | Build credits in TeamCity Cloud can be redeemed for build minutes on JetBrains-hosted agents, exchanged at a flat rate for concurrent builds on self-hosted agents or prepaid agents. You can also exchange build credits for additional storage, data transfer, and committer slots. Build credits are granted per every committer slot in a subscription and can be purchased on demand. |
Build time | Build time is calculated based on the total number of minutes your builds spend running from start to finish. |
Cloud storage | Provided for storing the results of builds, primarily build artifacts and build logs. |
Committer | A user who authors VCS (version control system) changes for projects that are built by TeamCity. A user occupies a committer slot after committing 10 or more changes into your projects during 30 days. This slot is reserved for this user until their last 10th commit gets older than 30 days. For example, if a user makes 5 commits on June 10 plus 5 commits on June 11 and then stops committing, TeamCity will release their committer slot on July 10, after 30 days since the first of these last 10 commits. |
Cloud data transfer | Cloud data transfer is counted when you download artifacts and build logs from TeamCity Cloud to outside locations. For example, to self-hosted agents, via the TeamCity web UI, or using tools like wget or curl. |
Instance type | A type of virtual machine with a preinstalled TeamCity agent instance. A type is defined by an operating system and instance size. For example, Linux Small. Depending on its expected load, each type is provided with a predefined set of hardware resources. |
JetBrains-hosted build agent | A build agent that can be used out of the box, without any additional configuration. Such build agents are configured, maintained, and hosted by JetBrains. When a build is added to the queue, a new JetBrains-hosted agent, matching the build requirements, automatically launches and starts your build. JetBrains-hosted build agents come with a preinstalled set of commonly used build software. You can view a complete list here. Additionally, TeamCity can run certain build steps within a Docker container. This allows executing steps that require software that may not be on the build agents by default. |
Self-hosted build agent | A build agent that can be connected to TeamCity Cloud, but is hosted and managed by the customer (locally, or in cloud). Self-hosted build agents are useful if you require a custom set of build software, build environments, and so on. You can spend build credits on adding self-hosted build agents to your instance at a flat monthly rate. These agents do not draw on any additional build credits and can run an unlimited number of builds. When a self-hosted build agent is redeemed in your TeamCity Cloud instance, it increases the number of concurrent builds you can perform on self-hosted agents by 1. |
Prepaid build agent | A build agent hosted by JetBrains and prepaid with a fixed number of build credits monthly, instead of paying per build time. If thoroughly planned, using such agents allows significantly reducing costs: if an agent is supposed to run builds more than 6 hours per workday, it makes sense to prepay it in advance. This option is not as flexible as using regular JetBrains-hosted agents, as you pay for each agent that can run one build at a time instead of autostarting as many parallel builds as needed. However, it is convenient if you don't mind how many builds run in parallel and just want to pay a fixed sum monthly. You can combine these agents with regular JetBrains-hosted agents whenever necessary. If a new build can be assigned to either a regular or prepaid agent, TeamCity will always assign it to the prepaid one. |
Web users | QA, managers, or other team members who only access the TeamCity interface via UI and do not author changes in the code. These users do not occupy committer slots. They can view build results, modify build configurations, and perform other actions in the TeamCity UI with no licensing limits. See also: Guest Users |