Buildkite vs Tekton comparison

Buildkite and Google are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Google is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Google users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

199 Views
75 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Tekton

Read 36 Tekton reviews

5,137 Views
3,266 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Buildkite

Tekton

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Tekton and Buildkite compete in the CI/CD tools category. Tekton has the upper hand for Kubernetes-centric environments due to its serverless architecture and deep integration with Kubernetes, while Buildkite offers a more intuitive approach for workflow management through YAML.

Features: Tekton offers a cloud-native, Kubernetes-driven approach, excelling in customizability, scalability, and support for a variety of tasks within CI/CD pipelines. Its serverless architecture allows for cost-efficient operations with robust orchestration features. Buildkite is noted for intuitive workflow management through YAML files, efficient deployment across private spaces, and Docker integration, enhancing its efficiency in container management.

Room for Improvement: Tekton requires a deep understanding of Kubernetes, presenting challenges in setup for less experienced users. Improvements in storage and cluster-level logging, as well as debugging capabilities, are needed. Buildkite's workflow representation can be complex, and its logging system requires enhancements for smooth error identification. Auto-scalability and third-party tool integration remain areas for significant improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tekton's deployment is bolstered by Red Hat support, significantly benefiting on-premise and hybrid cloud environments with OpenShift. Although its open-source nature leans towards community reliance, documentation can be improved. Buildkite predominantly supports public cloud settings, making deployment straightforward, yet it lacks direct customer service as compared to Tekton's environment.

Pricing and ROI: Tekton's alignment with Kubernetes offers cost benefits, optimizing resources in Kubernetes clusters and eliminating licensing fees, making it ideal for cost-conscious environments. Buildkite's per-user pricing offers cost-effectiveness for larger enterprises but can be pricier for smaller ones. Its self-hosted option and integration with cloud platforms deliver substantial ROI by boosting deployment efficiency and productivity.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. Tekton Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Tekton

March 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tekton

Ranking in Build Automation

2nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal

Senior Engineering Consultant at ASSURANCE IQ, INC.

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.

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AjayKrishna

Senior Software Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

If you're dealing with many applications and need a reliable, scalable, and efficient system, I'd recommend this solution

Tekton's most important feature is its cloud-native nature. Unlike Jenkins, which may not scale as efficiently, Tekton's CI pipeline can automatically scale up to handle increased workload demands without needing manual adjustments. Another important aspect is the level of customization offered by Tekton. Each task in the CI pipeline can be customized independently, allowing developers to write code in various languages like shell scripting, Java, or Python and incorporate them into the pipeline as needed. This level of abstraction and customization greatly benefits developers in creating efficient CI pipelines. Also, it can be challenging to understand the logs and troubleshoot issues without clear guidance. It's not always easy to reach technical support and get immediate answers. In my opinion, improvement in this area would be beneficial.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution."

"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."

"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."

"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."

"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 solution can be considered as a very well-polished platform with a really great UI."

More Buildkite pros

"I like the setup of the dashboard."

"The platform's most valuable feature is its wireless capability, which makes installation easy and sets up the flow."

"You can isolate most Tekton assets in the Kubernetes namespace for your feature branch. This allows you to freely change Tekton assets and objects to adapt to your feature branch and requirements."

"The feature that I like most about Tekton is that it is built for Kubernetes, so we can utilize our resources effectively."

"I find it beneficial to show data from Tekton to another GitHub or Bitbucket pipeline."

"Tekton's inclusion in Kubernetes deployment offers better visibility on how Tekton is performing within a cluster. It is lightweight and not as heavy as Jenkins to maintain."

"The tool offers flexibility and compatibility."

"Tekton is serverless and runs on OpenShift, and we leverage Tekton to take full advantage of the Kubernetes features such as running and scaling the solution in PaaS."

More Tekton pros

Cons

"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."

"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."

"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."

"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."

"Based on the load, the agents can be scaled up and scaled down, and while they are scaling up, sometimes they just get stuck."

"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."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"Initially, working with YAML configuration can be challenging using the solution."

"The stability issues can be there."

"RBAC is really needed for Tekton."

"When we started with Tekton around 2021 or early 2022, the community support was somewhat limited, which posed challenges when dealing with issues or debugging. We had to rely on Red Hat OpenShift support to overcome these challenges. However, I believe that these issues will naturally improve over timeas the developer community grows stronger. From a technical perspective, I haven't had the opportunity to deeply evaluate the product end-to-end, especially in the past year or so, when I've been less involved with it."

"The product's version update management process needs improvement."

"Incorporating AI could be a potential enhancement in the future."

"The user interface of Tekton could be improved."

"One area for improvement is the number of CRDs created during installation. Tekton currently creates 10 to 11 CRDs, which can be overwhelming."

More Tekton cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 don't think the tool is expensive."

"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."

"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 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."

"The solution is open-source."

"Tekton is an open-source tool."

"The product is free of cost."

"The tool is open-source and free to use."

"It is entirely open source and free of charge."

"The product is free and open-source."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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How does Tekton compare with Jenkins?

When you are evaluating tools for automating your own GitOps-based CI/CD workflow, it is important to keep your requirements and use cases in mind. Tekton deployment is complex and it is not very e...

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What do you like most about Tekton?

Its seamless integration with Kubernetes, being built on top of it and utilizing Custom Resource Definitions, ensures a smooth experience within Kubernetes environments exclusively.

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What needs improvement with Tekton?

Regarding areas for improvement in Tekton, I have not encountered significant issues. It works well for our use case. However, incorporating AI could be a potential enhancement in the future.

See all answers

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 60% of the time

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GitHub Actions vs Tekton

Compared 34% of the time

GitLab vs Tekton

Compared 25% of the time

Harness vs Tekton

Compared 8% of the time

Jenkins vs Tekton

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Tekton

March 2025

Download Tekton product report

Overview

Buildkite is a powerful CI/CD tool praised for its scalability and flexibility in automating and managing complex workflows across multiple platforms. Its integration capabilities with various systems and supports for secure, customizable environments enhance development efficiency and data privacy. The feedback highlights significant boosts in productivity and operational cost reduction, making Buildkite a strategic asset for businesses aiming to streamline development tasks and align with organizational goals.

Buildkite

Tekton is a powerful yet flexible Kubernetes-native open-source framework for creating continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) systems. It lets you build, test, and deploy across multiple cloud providers or on-premises systems by abstracting away the underlying implementation details.

Google

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

The Home Depot, PayPal, Target, HSBC, McKesson, Oncology Venture

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Tekton

March 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. Tekton

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