I'm about to set up a few private projects, and want to know how the pricing works for my case. I can't figure out the Azure pipeline pricing for multiple non-parallel projects.
Let's say I have 5 unrelated git projects, set up with pipelines in Azure. Since they are unrelated I don't want them in the same pipeline. Each of the projects will probably get updates 1-2 times/year, meaning they will build very seldom.
According to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/devops/azure-devops-services/:
- 1 Microsoft-hosted job with 1,800 minutes per month for CI/CD is free
- $40 per extra Microsoft-hosted CI/CD parallel job
I can't figure out how that would work in my case. It's probably one of these, but which one?
- I can use the free pipeline for all the 5 projects. This works since I don't need any parallel jobs.
- I can use the free pipeline for 1 project, and need another one for the other 4, for a total cost of $40. The free pipeline only covers 1 project, but since I don't want parallel builds the other 4 uses only 1 pipeline.
- I have 1 free and 4 payed pipelines, for a total cost of $160. Each project needs its own pipeline.
I've had a chat with their sales, and they couldn't help me clarify it. They suggested to use 1 pipeline, but since the projects are unrelated I don't want to do that. Googling for information just gives information about how to set up pipelines, not about how pricing works.
The parallel jobs option is configured at organization level that means it affects all projects within the organization. It is used to set how many agent jobs can be run in parallel at the same time within the same organization.
For the pipeline free tier within an organization:
For your case, if each build job of the projects will not run for more than 1 hour each time, since the builds very seldom, you can consider just applying the free tier in your organization. If you have not gained the free tier in your organization, you can submit a request here.