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Compute quota (PREMIUM)

Renamed from "CI/CD minutes" to "compute quota" or "units of compute" in GitLab 16.1.

NOTE: The term CI/CD minutes is being renamed to units of compute. During this transition, you might see references in the UI and documentation to CI/CD minutes, CI minutes, pipeline minutes, CI pipeline minutes, pipeline minutes quota, and units of compute. For more information, see epic 2150.

Administrators can limit the amount of time that projects can use to run jobs on shared runners each month. This limit is tracked with a compute quota.

By default, one minute of execution time by a single job uses one unit of compute. The total execution time for a pipeline is the sum of all its jobs' durations. Jobs can run concurrently, so the total usage can be higher than the end-to-end duration of a pipeline.

On GitLab.com:

On self-managed GitLab instances:

  • Compute quotas are disabled by default.
  • When enabled, compute quotas apply to private projects only.
  • Administrators can assign more units of compute if a namespace uses all its monthly quota.

Project runners are not subject to a compute quota.

Set the compute quota for all namespaces

Moved to GitLab Premium in 13.9.

By default, GitLab instances do not have a compute quota. The default value for the quota is 0, which is unlimited. However, you can change this default value.

Prerequisite:

  • You must be a GitLab administrator.

To change the default quota that applies to all namespaces:

  1. On the left sidebar, expand the top-most chevron ({chevron-down}).
  2. Select Admin Area.
  3. On the left sidebar, select Settings > CI/CD.
  4. Expand Continuous Integration and Deployment.
  5. In the Compute quota box, enter a limit.
  6. Select Save changes.

If a quota is already defined for a specific namespace, this value does not change that quota.

Set the compute quota for a specific namespace

Moved to GitLab Premium in 13.9.

You can override the global value and set a compute quota for a specific namespace.

Prerequisite:

  • You must be a GitLab administrator.

To set a compute quota for a namespace:

  1. On the left sidebar, expand the top-most chevron ({chevron-down}).
  2. Select Admin Area.
  3. On the left sidebar, select Overview > Groups.
  4. For the group you want to update, select Edit.
  5. In the Compute quota box, enter the maximum number of units of compute.
  6. Select Save changes.

You can also use the update group API or the update user API instead.

NOTE: You can set a compute quota for only top-level groups or user namespaces. If you set a quota for a subgroup, it is not used.

View compute usage

Prerequisite:

  • You must have access to the build to view the total usage and quota summary for a namespace associated with a build.
  • Access to Usage Quotas page is based on your role in the associated namespace or group.

View Usage Quota Reports for a group

Displaying shared runners duration per project introduced in GitLab 15.0.

Prerequisite:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.

To view compute usage for your group:

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your group. The group must not be a subgroup.
  2. Select Settings > Usage Quotas.
  3. Select the Pipelines tab.

The projects list shows projects with compute usage or shared runners usage in the current month only. The list includes all projects in the namespace and its subgroups, sorted in descending order of compute usage.

View Usage Quota reports for a personal namespace

Displaying shared runners duration introduced in GitLab 15.0.

Prerequisite:

  • The namespace must be your personal namespace.

You can view the compute usage for a personal namespace:

  1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
  2. Select Edit profile.
  3. On the left sidebar, select Usage Quotas.

The projects list shows personal projects with compute usage or shared runners usage in the current month only. The list is sorted in descending order of compute usage.

Purchase additional units of compute (FREE SAAS)

If you're using GitLab SaaS, you can purchase additional packs of units of compute. These additional units of compute:

  • Are used only after the monthly quota included in your subscription runs out.
  • Are carried over to the next month, if any remain at the end of the month.
  • Are valid for 12 months from date of purchase or until all units of compute are consumed, whichever comes first. Expiry of units of compute is not enforced.

For example, with a GitLab SaaS Premium license:

  • You have 10,000 monthly units of compute.
  • You purchase an additional 5,000 units of compute.
  • Your total limit is 15,000 units of compute.

If you use 13,000 units of compute during the month, the next month your additional units of compute become 2,000. If you use 9,000 units of compute during the month, your additional units of compute remain the same.

If you bought additional units of compute while on a trial subscription, those units of compute are available after the trial ends or you upgrade to a paid plan.

You can find pricing for additional units of compute on the GitLab Pricing page.

Purchase units of compute for a group (FREE SAAS)

Prerequisite:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.

You can purchase additional units of compute for your group. You cannot transfer purchased units of compute from one group to another, so be sure to select the correct group.

  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your group.
  2. Select Settings > Usage Quotas.
  3. Select Pipelines.
  4. Select Buy additional units of compute.
  5. Complete the details of the transaction.

After your payment is processed, the additional units of compute are added to your group namespace.

Purchase units of compute for a personal namespace (FREE SAAS)

Prerequisite:

  • The namespace must be your personal namespace.

To purchase additional units of compute for your personal namespace:

  1. On the left sidebar, select your avatar.
  2. Select Edit profile.
  3. On the left sidebar, select Usage Quotas.
  4. Select Buy additional units of compute. GitLab redirects you to the Customers Portal.
  5. Locate the subscription card that's linked to your personal namespace on GitLab SaaS, select Buy more units of compute, and complete the details of the transaction.

After your payment is processed, the additional units of compute are added to your personal namespace.

How compute usage is calculated

GitLab uses this formula to calculate the compute usage of a job:

Job duration * Cost factor
  • Job duration: The time, in seconds, that a job took to run on a shared runner, not including time spent in the created or pending statuses.
  • Cost factor: A number based on project visibility.

The value is transformed into units of compute and added to the count of used units in the job's top-level namespace.

For example, if a user alice runs a pipeline:

  • Under the gitlab-org namespace, the units of compute used by each job in the pipeline are added to the overall consumption for the gitlab-org namespace, not the alice namespace.
  • For one of the personal projects in their namespace, the units of compute are added to the overall consumption for the alice namespace.

The compute used by one pipeline is the total units of compute used by all the jobs that ran in the pipeline. Jobs can run concurrently, so the total compute usage can be higher than the end-to-end duration of a pipeline.

Cost factor

The cost factors for jobs running on shared runners on GitLab.com are:

The cost factors on self-managed instances are:

  • 0 for public projects, so they do not consume units of compute.
  • 1 for internal and private projects.

Cost factor for community contributions to GitLab projects

Community contributors can use up to 300,000 minutes on shared runners when contributing to open source projects maintained by GitLab. The maximum of 300,000 minutes would only be possible if contributing exclusively to projects part of the GitLab product. The total number of minutes available on shared runners is reduced by the units of compute used by pipelines from other projects. The 300,000 minutes applies to all SaaS tiers, and the cost factor calculation is:

  • Monthly compute quota / 300,000 job duration minutes = Cost factor

For example, with a monthly compute quota of 10,000 in the Premium tier:

  • 10,000 / 300,000 = 0.03333333333 cost factor.

For this reduced cost factor:

  • The merge request source project must be a fork of a GitLab-maintained project, such as gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com, or gitlab-org/gitlab.
  • The merge request target project must be the fork's parent project.
  • The pipeline must be a merge request, merged results, or merge train pipeline.

GitLab administrators can add a namespace to the reduced cost factor with a flag named ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_namespaces.

Additional costs on GitLab SaaS

GitLab SaaS runners have different cost factors, depending on the runner type (Linux, Windows, macOS) and the virtual machine configuration.

GitLab SaaS runner type Machine Size Cost factor
Linux OS amd64 small 1
Linux OS amd64 medium 2
Linux OS amd64 large 3
Linux OS amd64 + GPU-enabled medium, GPU standard 7
macOS M1 Medium 6
Windows Server - 1 (Beta)

Monthly reset of compute usage

On the first day of each calendar month, the accumulated compute usage is reset to 0 for all namespaces that use shared runners. This means your full quota is available, and calculations start again from 0.

For example, if you have a monthly quota of 10,000 units of compute:

  • On April 1, you have 10,000 units of compute.
  • During April, you use only 6,000 of the 10,000 units of compute.
  • On May 1, the accumulated compute usage resets to 0, and you have 10,000 units of compute to use again during May.

Usage data for the previous month is kept to show historical view of the consumption over time.

Monthly rollover of purchased units of compute

If you purchase additional units of compute and don't use the full amount, the remaining amount rolls over to the next month.

For example:

  • On April 1, you purchase 5,000 additional units of compute.
  • During April, you use only 3,000 of the 5,000 additional units of compute.
  • On May 1, the unused units of compute roll over, so you have 2,000 additional units of compute available for May.

Additional units of compute are a one-time purchase and do not renew or refresh each month.

What happens when you exceed the quota

When the compute quota is used for the current month, GitLab stops processing new jobs.

  • Any non-running job that should be picked by shared runners is automatically dropped.
  • Any job being retried is automatically dropped.
  • Any running job can be dropped at any point if the overall namespace usage goes over-quota by a grace period.

The grace period for running jobs is 1,000 units of compute.

Jobs on project runners are not affected by the compute quota.

GitLab SaaS usage notifications

On GitLab SaaS an email notification is sent to the namespace owners when:

  • The remaining units of compute is below 30% of the quota.
  • The remaining units of compute is below 5% of the quota.
  • All the compute quota has been used.

Special quota limits

In some cases, the quota limit is replaced by one of the following labels:

  • Unlimited: For namespaces with unlimited compute quota.
  • Not supported: For namespaces where active shared runners are not enabled.

Reduce compute quota usage

If your project consumes too much compute quota, there are some strategies you can use to reduce your usage:

If you manage an open source project, these improvements can also reduce compute quota consumption for contributor fork projects, enabling more contributions.

See our pipeline efficiency guide for more details.

Reset compute usage (PREMIUM SELF)

An administrator can reset the compute usage for a namespace for the current month.

Reset usage for a personal namespace

  1. Find the user in the admin area.
  2. Select Edit.
  3. In Limits, select Reset compute usage.

Reset usage for a group namespace

  1. Find the group in the admin area.
  2. Select Edit.
  3. In Permissions and group features, select Reset compute usage.