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Buildkite vs GitHub Actions comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Buildkite
Ranking in Build Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Has an easy setup phase while also offering good documentation
The problem we are facing sometimes is that we have lots of unit testers, and we have to wait about ten minutes to complete all of those because we want to run or find a way. It's not directly due to the limitation of the tool as well, but when we are running the spec, we want to run those parallelly and decrease the downtime so that our deployment can be faster. I think that one is not possible only due to the it also depends upon the unit test framework as well we are using. When we tried with the multiple test cases in a parallel manner, there were some dependencies, and one over another kept failing. We make those sequential calls. The aforementioned area consists of the issues my company faced while using Buildkite.
Muzammil Riaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers version control, automated script execution and reduces manual efforts
Its integration and deployment are quite easy. You need to create a YAML file in your project, detailing configurations within this file. It integrates itself, requiring you to specify titles, descriptions, parameters, and a trigger scheduler if needed. Apart from that, it's just a simple YAML file, so there's no need for complex configurations. In one project, I used GitHub to automate an application related to email marketing, focusing on actions for data scraping. This required running scripts daily, sometimes even twice or thrice a day. Manually executing these scripts is inefficient and overly reliant on individual team members. However, by integrating the project with GitHub Actions, we automated script execution. Triggers were set up to initiate the pipeline automatically with every new commit or push to a branch. Additionally, we implemented schedulers to run pipelines at predetermined times, like 9 PM or 2 PM. Another enhancement was executing five tests in parallel through data actions, making the process more robust. GitHub Actions also offers stepwise execution details, greatly aiding in understanding and managing workflows. I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution can be considered as a very well-polished platform with a really great UI."
"If you join our team, it's very easy to learn Buildkite. We have our own boilerplate, so you can just clone it and add your configuration steps. Plus, we have documentation available to guide you through the process."
"It is a stable solution."
"Using Buildkite, it's much easier to manage pipelines. It's straightforward to understand what each pipeline returns, making it easy to edit configurations, such as passwords. Although there is a steep learning curve initially, the overall process is still comprehensible. Additionally, Buildkite offers features like hooks and triggers; for example, an action in the app can automatically trigger a pipeline. These elements can be added to specific pipelines, ensuring the entire process is automated."
"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."
"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."
"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."
"Buildkite makes it easier to conduct deployment. When I merge a PR in Buildkite, it automatically starts the deployment process. It used to be challenging to shift code from the development branch to the testing branch because I had to follow up with multiple developers. Previously, I was dependent on the DevOps team and developers to handle deployments, but now it allows me to deploy the solutions myself.This has made it much easier for me to handle both non-production and production environments."
"The most valuable features of GitHub Actions include its seamless integration within GitHub, which simplifies the CI/CD pipeline setup. The scalability of using different types of runners—both public and private runners—enhances deployment flexibility."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"The product's most beneficial feature is the ability to create workflows within the solution."
"It is easy to use, especially if you are accustomed to using GitHub."
"The level of automation achievable is really good. So, the custom workflow creation and Marketplace Actions improved our project's efficiency."
"The main benefit is collaboration. It allows us to easily collaborate with other developers, regardless of location. For example, we can collaborate with both our African and German colleagues seamlessly. It's platform-agnostic, so it is flexible and not tied to any OS, so we can work on Linux, Windows, web, and even Oracle applications. It's flexible, reliable, and overall an excellent tool for our needs."
"It is a very stable solution as we have not faced any issues."
"We can trigger files manually or automate processes."
 

Cons

"Since we were using Buildkite for the first time, we had a lot of difficulty understanding how it worked. We didn't find any documentation from third parties; only Buildkite provided documentation. As a result, we faced a steep learning curve. After some time, it became much easier to use. Initially, understanding certain features, like the R integration, was challenging."
"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"Buildkite has issues while creating or extending branches as only the first five builds in the user-interface can be accessed and post that one has to access the next builds by remembering branch names without pagination which can be inconvenient."
"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."
"Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run."
"The way Buildkite represents workflows can be challenging. It uses Directed Acyclic Graphs, and there's a trade-off between abstraction and understanding what goes wrong when something fails. When a layer of jobs breaks down, it can be difficult to identify the issue at first glance. Additionally, logging can be cumbersome. I prefer GitHub Workflows."
"It gets very complex if you want the tool to scale automatically."
"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."
"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."
"The minor drawback of GitHub Actions is the management of the dashboard and pipeline runs, which needs improvement. The dashboard for running pipelines could be better."
"The only issue I have faced is with authorization, particularly when configuring the GitHub token correctly."
"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."
"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."
"I find Buildkite cost-effective as it has definitely increased my productivity, especially on the deployment side. It saved a lot of my time and improved data management because I can handle different environments myself now."
"We used the solution’s free version."
"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"I don't think the tool is expensive."
"Buildkite is known to be cheaper than GitHub Workflows, which is considered a standard in the industry. It can be cost-effective, especially for organizations that heavily utilize Docker and containerization, because every code change triggers a new build. Its integration with AWS, particularly with ECR, and its caching capabilities with layers are powerful features."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?
As a newbie, I think BuildKite has several issues. For example, it can't get the status of a PR once it's closed. The syntax is easy to use, but updating a pipeline requires administrator settings,...
What is your primary use case for Buildkite?
I use Buildkite on our CI/CD tool to build and deploy our services. Over the past few years, I’ve noticed that the build times have reduced due to the implementation of some testing features. The m...
What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?
I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.
What do you like most about GitHub Actions?
I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I pay approximately five dollars per developer per month. I created a GitHub organization for managing users.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications. I currently rely on GitHub Actions for web applications but have to use another tool for mobile apps.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.