Changes to GitLab.com public project CI/CD minute quotas

In the upcoming milestones, we will be extending CI/CD minute usage quotas to GitLab.com public projects not part of GitLab open source programs.

In the first half of 2021, GitLab.com and other CI/CD providers faced a large uptick in the abuse of free pipeline minutes to mine for cryptocurrencies. To discourage and reduce abuse, we annouced several changes to help ensure service continued to be reliable for our customers and users. The most recent change was made on 2021-07-17 to "include public projects in pipeline minutes quota for free users."

Why add a usage quota to public projects?

Previously, GitLab provided public projects on GitLab.com with a very high number of shared runner minutes to facilitate community contributions to open source. This means cryptominers are able to use GitLab.com shared runners to process large quantities of pipelines and consume an inordinate amount of minutes. These behaviors negatively impact the performance and the availability of GitLab.com shared runners. By adding a quota to the pipelines, the abusers are no longer able to process and consume minutes because there is a limit in place.

CI/CD minute quotas enable CI/CD minute accumulation, which also gives you transparency into pipeline minute billing. Accumulation of CI/CD minutes in GitLab empowers you to make informed decisions about how to optimize your pipelines and CI/CD usage.

How does this usage quota impact you?

• Self-managed users are not impacted by these changes as CI/CD minutes are only relevant for GitLab.com users.

• Members of GitLab's open source program are not subject to the new quotas for public project CI/CD minutes. As noted in the program description, Features of [GitLab Ultimate](/pricing/ultimate/), including 50,000 CI/CD minutes, are free to qualifying open source projects through the GitLab for Open Source Program., calculated at a program-specific cost factor.

• All other GitLab.com public project users (who account for 5% of our usage) will receive a notification email when they reach their CI/CD quota. Namespace owners will then have the option of upgrading the account to a higher [plan](/pricing/ or purchasing additional CI/CD minutes. Self-managed runners can still be used even when a project reaches quota limits.

For more information on CI/CD minutes and billing, please refer to the customer FAQ.

What's Next?

To further protect GitLab.com from cryptomining abuse, in the next few months you'll notice some changes to GitLab.com CI/CD minute quotas and the types of projects that accumulate pipeline minutes.

To address your questions and feedback on these changes going forward, we have created a space in the GitLab Community Forum, which is actively monitored by GitLab team members and product managers involved with this change.