Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Buildkite vs GitHub Actions comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
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."
"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."
"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."
"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."
"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."
"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."
"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."
"It is a stable solution."
"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."
"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."
"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 is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"It offers numerous built-in features for pipeline management, release management, and even work item tracking on boards, which makes it a versatile tool that seamlessly integrates with hardware and facilitates optimization."
"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"My company has had problems with the tool's parallel running and execution time. The testing framework also has some limitations. The tool cannot do everything."
"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."
"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, and viewing pipelines for others isn't straightforward."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"The product must provide better integration with other tools."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"The only issue I have faced is with authorization, particularly when configuring the GitHub token correctly."
"The primary area for improvement I see is in artifact management, especially for saving screenshots or videos from failed tests or data-driven actions. Currently, the configuration for saving these artifacts is complex."
"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."
"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."
"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."
"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."
"In our company, procedures or rules need to be completed, which is not a problem with GitHub Actions but with our process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't think the tool is expensive."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."
"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 solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."
"We used the solution’s free version."
"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."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"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."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?
One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes...
What is your primary use case for Buildkite?
I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create fil...
What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?
With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability ...
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

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.