GitLab Runner: Running jobs in parallel

This documentation is part of the Building Docker images guide. You can view the complete guide here: Build and push Docker images efficiently from your GitLab CI/CD pipelines using Stackhero runners and Docker-in-Docker.

👋 Welcome to the Stackhero documentation!

Stackhero offers a simple GitLab Runner cloud solution that makes running your GitLab CI/CD jobs efficient and straightforward. Here’s what you can expect:

• Unlimited CI/CD minutes: run your pipelines as often as you need, with no per-minute billing or unexpected fees.
• Multiple concurrent jobs: speed up your development by running several jobs in parallel.
• The Docker executor with Docker-in-Docker support: easily build and push container images as part of your CI/CD workflows.
• Works seamlessly with both GitLab.com and self-managed GitLab instances.
• A private, dedicated infrastructure with fast NVMe/SSD storage ensures stable and predictable build performance.
• Available in 🇪🇺 Europe and 🇺🇸 USA regions to meet your team's needs.

Save time: you can connect your first GitLab Runner and start running pipelines in just a few minutes!

Your plan determines how many jobs can run concurrently. Jobs in the same stage start together, up to your concurrency limit. This means several independent jobs can run in parallel and finish as soon as the slowest job completes, rather than waiting for each to finish in sequence.

Example:

stages:
  - test

unit:
  stage: test
  image: node:22
  script: npm run test:unit

integration:
  stage: test
  image: node:22
  script: npm run test:integration

e2e:
  stage: test
  image: node:22
  script: npm run test:e2e

If you set your concurrency to 1 or higher, the unit, integration, and e2e jobs will run at the same time.

For more information on building Docker images in GitLab CI/CD pipelines, you can refer to the official GitLab documentation on using Docker builds.