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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
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of AWS CodeBuild is 1.2%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Udhay Prakash Pethakamsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good integrations, is flexible, and has a comparable price
The product must provide more integrations. It is a replica of Jenkins. We have a management overhead. When I build artifacts stored outside the S3 bucket, it will have additional charges on the storage volumes. If we use S3 buckets regularly, it is fine. However, when we store somewhere else, it will be an issue. There is no persistent storage or preservation of workspace between the builds. We must fix the dependencies every time, even if the dependencies are the same. It is unnecessary.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CodeBuild supports various platforms and coding."
"The integration with other AWS services has streamlined our workflow."
"The initial setup of CodeBuild is easy."
"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 integration is a good feature."
"AWS CodeBuild reduces wait time and optimizes workflows."
"The integration is a good feature."
"A valuable feature is the support for third-party repositories such as Bitbucket, GitLab, or GitHub."
"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."
"If you're handy enough with DSL and you can present your own front-facing interface to your developers, then you can actually have a lot more granular control with Chef in operations over what developers can perform and what they can't."
"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."
"We have had less production issues since using Chef to automate our provisioning."
"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."
"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."
"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."
"Manual deployments came to a halt completely. Server provisioning became lightning fast. Chef-docker enabled us to have fewer sets of source code for different purposes. Configuration management was a breeze and all the servers were as good as immutable servers."
 

Cons

"There is no persistent storage or preservation of workspace between the builds."
"There have been times when CodeBuild has shown some instability, like bugs or breakdowns."
"While working on building images for multiple applications within a single script, I encountered an issue where looping functionality was not supported as expected."
"The front-end interface and the management are somewhat challenging, and there's a lot of space for improvement."
"We had integration issues with a tool called Octopus Deploy while using CodeBuild. AWS support helped us resolve it, however, it could be better."
"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."
"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."
"One of the main challenges is that if the environment is not set up properly, it will result in issues such as image errors."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."
"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."
"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."
"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."
"Third-party innovations need improvement, and I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"The solution could improve in managing role-based access. This would be helpful."
"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Media Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
17%
University
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS CodeBuild?
It works seamlessly with AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR).
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CodeBuild?
Regarding pricing, AWS services are quite expensive compared to open source tools like Git that are available for free.
What needs improvement with AWS CodeBuild?
We had integration issues with a tool called Octopus Deploy while using CodeBuild. AWS support helped us resolve it, however, it could be better.
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.
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.
 

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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.