Members of the Apple Developer Program will soon receive 25 hours of compute time in Xcode Cloud per month for free as part of their membership benefits, with developers able to purchase additional hours in the Apple Developer app for iPhone and iPad if required.
Xcode Cloud is an integrated service within Xcode for developers that services as a continuous integration and delivery solution. It expedites the app development and release process by amalgamating cloud-based tools. These tools facilitate app building, parallel execution of automated tests, distribution to testers, and monitoring and management of user feedback, ultimately ensuring the swift and efficient creation of applications.
Apple launched Xcode Cloud subscriptions last year. Subscriptions comprise of four levels including 25 compute hours for $14.99 per month, 100 compute hours for $49.99 per month, 250 compute hours for $99.99 per month, and 1000 compute hours for $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 that developers get results quickly.