See what Woodpecker CI (woodpecker-ci.org) offers: a free, community-run, Apache 2.0 CI/CD engine forked from Drone, with Docker-based pipelines and plugins.
Woodpecker CI is a free, open-source continuous integration and delivery engine that executes pipeline steps inside Docker containers, giving each build step an isolated and reproducible environment.
The project began in 2019 as a community fork of Drone CI, created after Drone's license changed from Apache 2.0 to a proprietary license following its 0.8 release. Developer laszlocph forked the last Apache-licensed Drone codebase to preserve a genuinely free path for users, and the first Woodpecker-branded release, version 0.8.104, shipped on September 9, 2019.
Unlike Drone, which is now maintained commercially by Harness under a Polyform Small Business license, Woodpecker CI is maintained by a community of contributors under the Apache 2.0 license and is explicitly committed to staying free and open source, which is its core differentiator against both Drone and hosted CI/CD SaaS products.
Woodpecker maintains backward compatibility with Drone's existing YAML pipeline syntax, so teams migrating from Drone can typically reuse their pipeline configuration files with little modification.
On top of that compatibility, Woodpecker has added its own capabilities, including a modernized web UI, trusted pipeline steps for controlled access to privileged operations, improved conditional step execution, and a growing plugin marketplace for extending pipeline behavior.
Each pipeline step runs inside its own Docker container, and Woodpecker integrates with common Git hosting platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, Gitea and Bitbucket to trigger pipelines automatically on code changes.
Woodpecker CI is completely free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license; there is no paid tier, subscription, or commercial license required to use it.
Because it is self-hosted, the only cost to running Woodpecker is the compute infrastructure a team chooses to run it on, giving organizations full control over CI/CD spend compared to per-seat or per-build hosted CI/CD SaaS products.
Yes, Woodpecker CI is completely free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license, with no paid tier required.
Yes, Woodpecker CI was forked from Drone CI in 2019 after Drone's license changed from Apache 2.0 to a proprietary license, to preserve a genuinely free and open-source CI/CD option.
Yes, Woodpecker maintains backward compatibility with Drone's YAML pipeline syntax, so existing Drone pipeline configuration files typically work with minimal changes.
Yes, Woodpecker executes each pipeline step inside its own Docker container, giving builds isolated and reproducible environments.
Woodpecker integrates with GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Bitbucket and other common Git hosting platforms to trigger pipelines on code changes.
No, Woodpecker CI (woodpecker-ci.org) is an unrelated open-source CI/CD platform; Woodpecker (woodpecker.co) is a separate cold email and LinkedIn outreach SaaS product. They share a name coincidentally.
Woodpecker CI is maintained by a community of open-source contributors under the woodpecker-ci GitHub organization rather than a single commercial vendor.
The first release under the Woodpecker name, version 0.8.104, was published on September 9, 2019.