Apple has confirmed that developers can now avail subscriptions for Xcode Cloud. The service has been undergoing a limited participation trial for a few months and was being beta tested for more than a year.
Apple Xcode Cloud is a Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) service that"s built into the Xcode IDE. The platform provides a wide range of cloud-based tools to developers who build apps for the Apple ecosystem. The platform accelerates the timeline for building apps, running automated tests, providing apps to testers, and managing user feedback, all in the cloud.
Xcode is a pre-deployment platform for apps, using which, developers can perform nearly all the major tests and fine-tune their creations for iOS, macOS, and other Apple platforms. Apple first announced the platform at WWDC 2021. However, it was accessible through an invite-only system.
At WWDC 2022, Apple offered access to the Xcode Cloud to all developers. However, the company restricted access to the free plan which only offers 25 compute hours per month. Moving forward, Apple is adding more subscription plans that offer more compute hours.
There are four monthly plans for developers to choose from. The “Free” plan offering 25 compute hours still exists. However, Apple will start charging $14.99 per month for the same starting in 2024. The free plan is a limited offer available only to members of the Apple Developer Program.
Moving forward, developers can purchase 100 computer hours per month for $49.99. For $99.99/month, Apple gives access to 250 compute hours, and for $399.99/month, developers can avail themselves of 1000 compute hours per month. Developers can switch between plans at any time. They will also be able to check their usage in App Store Connect and the Apple Developer app.
A compute hour is essentially an hour worth of computing power to run or execute a task in the cloud. Tasks such as building an app or running tests can quickly get heavy on computing resources. Apple offers its hardware to run these tasks through Xcode Cloud instead.
Via: MacRumors