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. Buildkite holds a 1.4% mindshare in BA, compared to Google’s 11.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Google users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

344 Views
344 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Tekton

Read 37 Tekton reviews

4,231 Views
4,231 Comparison Views

89% 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Tekton

July 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

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 1.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tekton is 11.7%, up from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

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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Prasad Gupta

Software Engineer at IBM Software Labs

Efficient CI/CD management with significant cost reduction and a user-friendly setup

One area for improvement is the number of CRDs created during installation. Tekton currently creates 10 to 11CRDs, which can be overwhelming. Instead, it would be better to have just one CRD that can handle all the information and create other necessary components automatically. Additionally, more integration capabilities for security, such as DAST, SAST, and IAST, should be directly built into Tekton to facilitate easier implementation of security features.

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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

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

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

"The documentation is quite helpful."

"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."

"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 product's initial setup phase was easy."

"You don't have to set up an agent in Buildkite like in Jenkins."

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

More Buildkite pros

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

"I like the branching and visualization tools for the pipeline."

"The most valuable features of Tekton include the reusability of tasks, the clean UI interface, and the binding of services and secrets."

"It is an open-source tool, which makes it highly adaptable."

"The 'promote' feature is beneficial as it simplifies deployment processes by allowing easy promotion of applications to different environments without needing to re-run CI/CD processes."

"When you run a pipeline, all the jobs are called. It is a very valuable feature that enhances job maintenance overall."

"The ability to scale is valuable."

"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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."

"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."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"The product's UI could be improved, as there are occasional latency issues. The triggering part, especially the CRD installation needs enhancement."

"Some of the tool's cons include its minimalistic dashboard, which lacks detailed information and control compared to other tools like Jenkins or GitLab. Additionally, it's primarily used by Japanese companies."

"If you are a beginner, then accessing the flexibility part can be overwhelming. We think the learning curve of the tool is steep, especially for those who are not already familiar with Kubernetes."

"The user interface of Tekton could be improved."

"Improvement is needed in the build step."

"It would be better if Tekton could show the YAML file while it is running, similar to GitHub pipelines, to provide more visibility on what's happening."

"Tekton should have more accessibility for some rare use cases so that we can have more references when applying some techniques to our pipeline."

"While Tekton is highly effective for Kubernetes-based setups, it might not suit users who require more control over bare-metal environments."

More Tekton cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"I don't think the tool is expensive."

"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 self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"Tekton is an open-source tool."

"The solution is open-source."

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

"The product is free of cost."

"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

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

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.

See all answers

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

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Compared 36% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 15% of the time

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 11% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 11% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

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GitHub Actions vs Tekton

Compared 33% of the time

GitLab vs Tekton

Compared 25% of the time

Harness vs Tekton

Compared 8% of the time

Jenkins vs Tekton

Compared 7% of the time

Bazel vs Tekton

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Tekton

June 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

July 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. Tekton

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