Woodpecker CI
By the Woodpecker CI community
Woodpecker CI is a lightweight, open-source, self-hosted continuous integration server that runs pipeline steps as containers, forked from Drone CI after its license changed.
Definition
Woodpecker CI is a lightweight, open-source, self-hosted continuous integration server that runs pipeline steps as containers, forked from Drone CI after its license changed.
Overview
Woodpecker CI began as a community fork of Drone CI, created after Drone's maintainers moved the project to a more restrictive license for later versions. Woodpecker's contributors chose to continue developing the last fully open-source Drone codebase under the Apache 2.0 license, preserving Drone's simple, container-native pipeline model while keeping the entire project free and open for self-hosting. Pipelines are defined in a simple YAML file, `.woodpecker.yml`, where each step runs inside its own container image, giving pipelines the same reproducibility and isolation benefits containers bring to application deployment — a step needing Node.js just specifies a Node image, without polluting a shared build server with installed toolchains. Woodpecker integrates with GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, and Bitbucket for source control and webhook triggers, and its lightweight server and agent architecture makes it easy to self-host on modest hardware. Woodpecker occupies a niche for teams and open-source projects that want a genuinely free, self-hosted CI tool without the operational weight of Jenkins or the licensing ambiguity that pushed the community away from later Drone releases. Its architecture is comparatively simple next to Kubernetes-native systems like Tekton, which makes it appealing for smaller teams or self-hosted Git forges like Gitea and Forgejo that want an equally lightweight CI companion.
Key Features
- Community fork preserving Drone CI's last fully open-source codebase
- Fully open source under Apache 2.0 with no paid tiers or license limits
- Container-native pipeline steps defined in simple YAML
- Lightweight server and agent architecture suited to self-hosting
- Native integration with GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Forgejo, and Bitbucket
- Plugin ecosystem reusing the Drone plugin format
- Multi-pipeline support for monorepos with independent workflows
- Small resource footprint compared to heavier CI platforms