Xcode Cloud is Apple's own continuous integration and delivery service. Workflows are configured inside Xcode or App Store Connect, builds run on Apple-managed macOS machines, and results flow straight into TestFlight and App Store submission. It is the lowest-friction CI an Apple-only team can pick, and the most tightly scoped one.
How its code signing works
Xcode Cloud uses cloud-managed signing: Apple creates and stores the certificates and provisioning profiles itself and signs your builds with them in its own infrastructure. You never export a .p12 or install a profile, which is exactly the pain it removes. The flip side is that those signing assets are not yours to use elsewhere. You cannot pull Xcode Cloud's certificates into another CI system, and builds made outside Xcode Cloud still need signing assets you manage yourself.
What it costs
Every Apple Developer Program membership includes 25 compute hours per month at no extra charge, with paid tiers above that. The free allowance comfortably covers a solo developer or a small app; teams with heavy test matrices burn through it quickly, since every simulator test run bills compute time.
Where its limits show up
- Apple platforms only. If the repo also builds an Android app or a backend, that half of the pipeline lives in another CI anyway.
- Delivery targets are TestFlight and the App Store. Enterprise and ad hoc distribution, or pushing artifacts to your own infrastructure, need custom scripts and workarounds.
- Signing assets are locked inside the service, so a second pipeline (nightly builds elsewhere, a migration, an acquisition) starts from zero.
- Build environment customization is limited to what Apple's images plus post-clone scripts allow.
Teams commonly start on Xcode Cloud and add or migrate to a second CI as those limits bite. For a side-by-side breakdown, see HexSign vs Xcode Cloud, and for the practical migration steps, the Xcode Cloud migration guide.