act
CI/CD & BuildRun GitHub Actions workflows locally for fast feedback
Replaces GitHub Actions
Best Lightweight CI/CD & Build for self-hosting
The 5 best Lightweight ci/cd & build you can self-host, ranked by community traction.
Earthly
CI/CD & BuildRepeatable, container-based builds for CI
Replaces Make, GitHub Actions
Woodpecker CI
CI/CD & BuildSimple, container-native continuous integration
Replaces Jenkins, CircleCI
Gitea Act Runner
CI/CD & BuildCI/CD runner for Gitea Actions
Replaces GitHub Actions
Laminar
CI/CD & BuildLightweight and modular continuous integration service
Replaces Jenkins
No apps match these filters.
At a glance
| App | Deploy effort | Difficulty | Min. RAM | License | ★ Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| act | Read-the-docs project | Easy | 256 MB | MIT | 72,322 |
| Earthly | Under-an-hour setup | Medium | 512 MB | MPL-2.0 | 12,058 |
| Woodpecker CI | Under-an-hour setup | Medium | 256 MB | Apache-2.0 | 7,999 |
| Gitea Act Runner | Under-an-hour setup | Medium | 256 MB | MIT | 800 |
| Laminar | Read-the-docs project | Medium | 128 MB | GPL-3.0 | 356 |
Quick picks
- Most adopted: act (72,322 GitHub stars).
- Lightest footprint: Laminar (from 128 MB RAM, against 512 MB for the heaviest here).
- Licensing: 2 of 5 use MIT; check the rest individually if you plan to modify and redistribute.
Every option here is open-source and self-hostable, tagged Lightweight within the ci/cd & build category. Deploy effort is graded from published container recipes, not vendor claims — see the methodology.