Apple has announced Xcode Cloud Subscriptions for developers to manage their workflows more effectively and “accelerate the development and delivery of high-quality apps.”
The tech giant introduced the Xcode Cloud at the WWDC 2021 event and after months of beta testing launched the service to help developers to accomplish common development tasks like building, testing, and delivering apps faster than ever. The service also enables developers and teams to collaborate with higher efficiency and allows performance-intensive tasks to be offloaded to the cloud and free up storage space on their Macs for other tasks.
However, the Xcode Cloud subscription was not available before.
Prices of Xcode Cloud Subscriptions plans
Now, Xcode Cloud account holders can now opt for one of the four subscription plans as per their compute hours.
- 25 compute hours per month are free till the end of 2023 and beyond that, it will cost $15 per month.
- 100 computer hours per month cost $49.99 per month.
- 250 computer hours per month cost $99.99 per month.
- 1000 computer hours per month cost $399.99 per month.
A compute hour is an hour of time used to execute a specific task in the cloud, such as building an app or running automated tests. For example, running 5 tests of 12 minutes each equals one compute hour. Xcode Cloud runs tests in parallel with other actions, such as analyzing, archiving, and building, so you’ll get results quickly.
You can track compute hour usage across your team in App Store Connect and the Apple Developer app.
According to Apple’s support page, developers require Xcode 13.4.1 or later and membership in the Developer Program to use Xcode Cloud and manage their subscription after configuring a workflow.
Account holders can start, upgrade or downgrade their subscription plan at any time and if they choose to cancel the subscription, they will have to use the available hours in the current billing period before switching to free 25 compute hours per month.
Opts out of Xcode Cloud after cancelling a paid subscription, all your data, including your product, workflows, and builds, will become inaccessible and cannot be restored. In some cases, this may take several hours.
