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AWS CodeBuild vs Chef 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

AWS CodeBuild
Ranking in Build Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Chef
Ranking in Build Automation
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (5th), Configuration Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of AWS CodeBuild is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 2.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS CodeBuild2.3%
Chef2.1%
Other95.6%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

SomdipRoy - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at Skillnetinc
Has enabled automated deployments through continuous integration and supports multi-environment delivery
My recommendation for AWS CodeBuild to make it better for the next release would be something within AWS CodeBuild which can support the repository functions as well. It may not be as powerful as GitHub Actions, but it provides a very competitive price compared to GitHub Actions. GitHub Actions, if you want to use the YML CI/CD pipeline, gives a free tier of around three thousand hours per month. AWS CodeBuild is a little more expensive than that. However, if it supports the repository function as well along with it, then it will be a complete package. Everything would be in AWS, including the code versioning, code commit to the code infrastructure, to the code database, to the networking, and how the applications are accessed. Everything would be in one place, which would be very helpful. I believe AWS CodeBuild is a bit expensive because GitHub provides around three thousand minutes free, plus it has the free repository function as well. At the enterprise level, it charges maybe around nineteen dollars per user, though I do not remember exactly. In terms of AWS CodeBuild, I believe it is a bit expensive because it is providing only the deployment features. It is not providing the repository. In that comparison, I would say it is a little bit expensive.
G Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Agent setup and complexity have limited automation benefits but have reduced manual patching work
There are other automation tools, configuration management tools in the market, which offer many good functionalities compared to Chef. For Chef, we need to install those agents, the Chef client, on all those nodes. That is another heinous task to perform on those nodes. Compared with other tools, they do not require any agent; they simply push configurations to all the clients. Chef needs to improve on this agent installation on all those nodes. I would say that the agent configuration is required, and we need to manage the workstation, the Chef server, and then the Chef client. These two or three things are very difficult. It is a time-taking task compared with other configuration management tools. They need to compete with other tools, such as Ansible or Terraform. They should work on their agent part. If they can remove the agent installation on the nodes and combine both the Chef server and workstation into one server, that will provide a significant benefit in cost for the clients. They should aim for an agentless architecture rather than an agent-based architecture, which will help other customers. That is a very difficult thing because I have stopped using Chef. If you have very good developers who are skilled in Ruby language and can write codes in the Chef recipe, then those developers should start using Chef.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS CodeBuild reduces wait time and optimizes workflows."
"A valuable feature is the support for third-party repositories such as Bitbucket, GitLab, or GitHub."
"CodeBuild supports various platforms and coding, which offers an advantage."
"One of the main features I value in CodeBuild compared to previous experiences, like using Jenkins, is its ability to handle tasks automatically with AWS, requiring only proper setup of the check file."
"The solution provides good integrations."
"The most important thing is that it's self-contained in an AWS account, and it's all linked to the customer's AWS account."
"Scalability is a great feature with AWS CodeBuild, because after deploying applications the service automatically scales up and down according to our AWS needs using load balancing, which makes managing applications much easier without significant interruptions."
"The integration with other AWS services has streamlined our workflow."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"The features are good in Chef, especially its compliance feature; it's very good and it's what I found most valuable in the tool."
"Chef has created much faster procedures for system setup and rollout of infrastructure in my organization, as well as for scaling and ensuring that all servers are configured identically."
"It has been very easy to tie it into our build and deploy automation for production release work, etc. All the Chef pieces more or less run themselves."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"The manual work has been reduced with the help of this automation, we only need two or three people to write those recipes and upload them on the Chef server, and once the configuration tool pulls those changes from the Chef server, it automatically deploys all those changes and has reduced our manpower and our costs."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
"It has decreased a lot of man-hours that we were previously spending doing stuff which we now manage with Chef, decreased the time to fix production issues, and reduced the number of production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
 

Cons

"I believe AWS CodeBuild is a bit expensive because GitHub provides around three thousand minutes free, plus it has the free repository function as well."
"The front-end interface and the management are somewhat challenging, and there's a lot of space for improvement."
"While working on building images for multiple applications within a single script, I encountered an issue where looping functionality was not supported as expected."
"For improvement, I'd suggest more build instance-type options. There's a big jump from 15 gigabytes of RAM to 150, and I'd like something in between as the larger option is too expensive for our needs."
"There is no persistent storage or preservation of workspace between the builds."
"We had integration issues with a tool called Octopus Deploy while using CodeBuild. AWS support helped us resolve it, however, it could be better."
"They can further improve the integration of the Bitbucket for CodeBuild."
"Notifications could be added, or SNS integration could be included so that notifications can be received on every build, whether the build fails or succeeds."
"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."
"However, if you are on-premise, it may not be the best solution."
"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."
"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."
"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay a monthly licensing fee."
"AWS CodeBuild is free. We only pay for our code's compute resources during the build process. For example, if our code takes ten minutes to build, we only pay for those ten minutes of computing time. CodeDeploy and CodePipeline are free because they're serverless and don't require computing resources. CodeCommit has minimal costs for storing code."
"Despite the cost, it is worth the investment."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."
"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."
"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Media Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CodeBuild?
The cost structure is affordable for most builds except macOS servers. Standard builds can utilize AWS EC2 servers for background operations. However, macOS or iOS builds require physical servers m...
What needs improvement with AWS CodeBuild?
My recommendation for AWS CodeBuild to make it better for the next release would be something within AWS CodeBuild which can support the repository functions as well. It may not be as powerful as G...
What is your primary use case for AWS CodeBuild?
My use of AWS CodeBuild is focused on the CI/CD part, which stands for continuous integration and continuous deployment. Basically, we write the code and then commit it into a repository, which cou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the orga...
What needs improvement with Chef?
I do not have anything in mind at this time for how Chef could be improved.
What is your primary use case for Chef?
My main use case for Chef is configuration management to set up systems, provision software, and keep configurations up to date. I create Chef recipes for setup and install needed software from a c...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CodeBuild
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CodeBuild vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.