Overview
As defined in our Software as a Service Agreement, a ‘User’ means a discrete instance you authorize to access the Services and/or use Credits. Users may include, for example, you, your and your Affiliate’s employees, consultants, contractors, representatives and/or human or automated agents.
The following actions will count a person or agent as an active user:
Commits that trigger builds count as active usage, even if the commit comes from an unregistered user, a PR merge, or Dependabot.
Re-running jobs in the CircleCI web app (including SSH debug).
Approving manual jobs (the approver is considered the actor for all downstream jobs).
Scheduling jobs with workflows.
Automated agents that trigger builds.
What does not count as an active user?
Simply viewing builds does not count. If you have read access to your organization’s repo on GitHub or Bitbucket, you can view builds on CircleCI without using a seat.
Pipelines that fail before any job runs. If a pipeline is created but fails at the configuration stage (e.g., missing
.circleci/config.yml, configuration errors, or the project is in "Set Up" state), no job is executed and the user is not counted as activeIf you trigger a build before registering with CircleCI, you’ll still be counted as an unregistered active user.
Billing Cycles and Seat Resets
For customers on all paid plans (Performance, Scale, and Custom), your billing cycle starts on the day you first sign up for a paid CircleCI plan. For example, if you sign up on July 15, your cycle runs from July 15 – August 14. At the start of each new cycle, your active user seats reset automatically.
Viewing Active Users:
Navigate to the Plan Page
Open your CircleCI app and click on the Plan page.View Usage Details
Click on the Usage tab to view your current usage for this billing cycle. This includes details such as compute credits, user seats, storage, and more.Understand User Billing
In the User section, if on the Performance Plan, each additional user will be charged 25,000 credits. If you're on the Scale Plan, each additional user will be charged 40,000 credits.
4. View Active Users
To see the list of users, click on the USERS tab. Here, you'll find the names of all users and the date they were last active.
How can I remove Users?
For Free and Performance Plans, Active Users cannot be removed from user seats during the current billing cycle. However, the seat count resets at the start of each new billing cycle.
Once a user has been counted as active for the month, the corresponding credits are deducted from your credit pool and cannot be refunded or reverted. Manual removal of users from active seats during the billing cycle is not supported. The system will automatically adjust at the start of the next cycle based on user activity.
Please note that even if you submit a user deletion request, the user will continue to appear as an Active User until the end of the current billing cycle.
Common misconception
Q: If my pipeline shows an error like "Could not find configuration" or the project is in "Set Up" state, am I charged?
No. A user seat charge only occurs when a job is dispatched and executed. If the pipeline fails before any job starts. For example, because there is no .circleci/config.yml in the repository no job runs, and the user is not counted as an active user.
Q: If a job fails with "infrastructure_fail", does it still count?
Yes. An infrastructure failure occurs during job execution. The job was dispatched and attempted to run, so the user is counted as an active user regardless of the job's outcome. This applies to all job outcomes: success, failed, infrastructure_fail, and timed out.
Additional Resources
What is an "Unregistered User"? - Learning more about what an unregistered user is and how to prevent this.
Am I an organization admin? - Confirm your permissions to view and make changes to Users.
How to gain access your Organization’s Plan Page - Become an admin on your CircleCI org.