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Chef vs TeamCity comparison

Progress Software and JetBrains are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Progress Software is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.0, while JetBrains is ranked #9 with an average rating of 6.8. Progress Software holds a 0.5% mindshare in BA, compared to JetBrains’s 7.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of JetBrains users who would recommend it.
Chef
Read 19 Chef reviews
  • 282 Views
  • 172 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
TeamCity
Read 28 TeamCity reviews
  • 2,185 Views
  • 1,937 Comparison Views
90% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Chef and TeamCity are competing products in the realm of automation tools. Chef seems to have the upper hand in configuration management, while TeamCity offers a competitive edge with its continuous integration and deployment capabilities.

Features: Chef provides flexible automation scripts for efficient infrastructure management, supporting various platforms and seamless cloud service integration. TeamCity is renowned for its powerful build management, allowing parallel builds and integration with different version control systems. It excels in pre-tested commit features, enhancing continuous delivery pipelines.

Room for Improvement: Chef could improve its user-friendliness for beginners and simplify its deployment model. Enhancements in its rollback capabilities and GUI might benefit users. TeamCity could focus on refining its cost structure and provide more intuitive user interfaces. Expanding support for additional third-party tools and broader platform compatibility could enhance its offering.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef emphasizes extensive customization but can be complex for newcomers. Their customer service assists with troubleshooting but requires more setup knowledge. TeamCity offers a smoother initial setup with intuitive configuration options, and its responsive support services make adoption simpler.

Pricing and ROI: Chef involves an upfront setup investment, but its open-source nature aids in lowering long-term costs, fitting specific budget models. TeamCity might have a higher initial cost due to licensing, but its efficient workflow and integrations provide notable ROI for development teams.

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To learn more, read our detailed Chef vs. TeamCity Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Chef vs. TeamCity
April 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.1
Chef improved deployment time, reduced human error, enhanced scalability, optimized resource use, and strengthened compliance and security management.
Sentiment score
8.0
TeamCity enhances build efficiency and deployment across time zones, supporting automation for optimized resource allocation and ROI evaluation.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Customers commend Chef for its responsive support, active community, comprehensive documentation, and efficient issue resolution despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
7.6
TeamCity's customer service is praised for professionalism, responsive support, comprehensive documentation, and effective community resources despite time zone challenges.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Chef is highly scalable, efficiently managing infrastructures of all sizes and accommodating numerous clients based on server capacity.
Sentiment score
7.3
TeamCity enables scalable deployments with multiple agents, requiring regular maintenance, effectively supporting large-scale projects and numerous users.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Users rate Chef's stability 8-9/10, comparing it favorably to competitors like Ansible, and find it stable for various use cases.
Sentiment score
7.7
TeamCity offers high reliability and stability, with minimal disruptions and effective resource management, despite occasional minor lags.
 

Room For Improvement

Chef needs better support, pricing, role management, flexibility, documentation, integration, and improved automation to compete with Ansible.
TeamCity's complex setup, poor UI navigation, and integration issues hinder efficiency, with needs for API, reporting, and alert improvements.
 

Setup Cost

Chef offers subscription plans with valuable automation features, but enterprise pricing is high and requires contacting sales for quotes.
TeamCity offers a developer-focused solution with scalable costs but requires an initial server setup expense despite a free version.
 

Valuable Features

Chef offers compliance, easy configuration management, and automation for IT infrastructure, integrating with CI processes and supporting multiple clouds.
TeamCity excels in build step flexibility, plugin support, cross-platform capabilities, Git integration, and intuitive usability for efficient pipeline management.
 

Categories and Ranking

Chef
Ranking in Build Automation
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (11th), Configuration Management (18th)
TeamCity
Ranking in Build Automation
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Chef is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TeamCity is 7.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Aaron P - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation
In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.
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Omakoji Idakwoji - PeerSpot reviewer
Build management system used to successfully create full request tests and run security scans
I find the TeamCity backend easily accessible. Users can login to the Linux servers that TeamCity is installed on and perform operations. Also I find the ability to template solutions using the meta runner a good feature as well as the user management feature. There is a display that shows which user made recent changes to a branch on GitHub, including the time the changes were made and the particular agent that ran the job. This is also a very useful feature. The metrics and audit available for projects, pipelines and jobs come in handy when debugging.
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 22, 2015
I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.
Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chef?
Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?
Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Chef?
Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.
See all answers
What do you like most about TeamCity?
One of the most beneficial features for us is the flexibility it offers in creating deployment steps tailored to different technologies.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TeamCity?
Compared to new technologies, TeamCity is more expensive and is an older tool compared to tools like GitLab.
See all answers
What needs improvement with TeamCity?
TeamCity's user interface could be improved; specifically, the tree structure on the homepage is not clear, making it difficult to search for projects. Moreover, there are some limitations related ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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BigFix vs Chef
Compared 29% of the time
AWS Systems Manager vs Chef Logo
AWS Systems Manager vs Chef
Compared 15% of the time
Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef Logo
Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef
Compared 11% of the time
VMware Aria Automation vs Chef Logo
VMware Aria Automation vs Chef
Compared 11% of the time
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef Logo
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef
Compared 10% of the time
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GitLab vs TeamCity Logo
GitLab vs TeamCity
Compared 35% of the time
GitHub Actions vs TeamCity Logo
GitHub Actions vs TeamCity
Compared 18% of the time
Harness vs TeamCity Logo
Harness vs TeamCity
Compared 15% of the time
CircleCI vs TeamCity Logo
CircleCI vs TeamCity
Compared 9% of the time
Tekton vs TeamCity Logo
Tekton vs TeamCity
Compared 9% of the time
More TeamCity Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Chef
April 2025
Chef reportDownload Chef product report
Buyer's Guide
TeamCity
March 2025
TeamCity reportDownload TeamCity product report
 

Overview

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

TeamCity is a Continuous Integration and Deployment server that provides out-of-the-box continuous unit testing, code quality analysis, and early reporting on build problems. A simple installation process lets you deploy TeamCity and start improving your release management practices in a matter of minutes. TeamCity supports Java, .NET and Ruby development and integrates perfectly with major IDEs, version control systems, and issue tracking systems.

JetBrains
 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Toyota, Xerox, Apple, MIT, Volkswagen, HP, Twitter, Expedia
Buyer's Guide
Chef vs. TeamCity
April 2025
Free Report: Chef vs. TeamCity
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