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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
10th
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
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (5th), Configuration Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of AWS CodeBuild is 2.3%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 2.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS CodeBuild2.3%
Chef2.2%
Other95.5%
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's support for a wide range of programming languages and build environments benefits development teams significantly in terms of productivity and ease of use."
"The solution provides good integrations."
"It works seamlessly with AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR)."
"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."
"AWS CodeBuild reduces wait time and optimizes workflows."
"CodeBuild supports various platforms and coding, which offers an advantage."
"The tool is used to build and test code. I find its biggest advantages are elasticity and reliability. We can easily assign as many computing resources as needed to build our code, which is much simpler than traditional methods that require server upgrades. It's a serverless tool, so it's very flexible and elastic."
"The initial setup of CodeBuild is easy."
"It is easy to manage on our production systems because there is an agent running on all the servers."
"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."
"Chef offers valuable features in infrastructure as code, where it uses cookbooks and recipes written in Ruby language for detailed and flexible configuration of systems and applications."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"The scalability of the product is quite nice; we have deployed it across six to seven organizations."
"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."
"The most valuable feature is the language that it uses: Ruby."
 

Cons

"The deployment fails sometimes."
"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."
"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."
"While working on building images for multiple applications within a single script, I encountered an issue where looping functionality was not supported as expected."
"Multiple clients have faced issues with pricing. After migrating from Azure to EC2, they were unexpectedly charged 100,000 rupees because the pricing details were not clearly visible."
"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."
"The front-end interface and the management are somewhat challenging, and there's a lot of space for improvement."
"There appears to be no effort to fix the command line utility functionality, which is definitely broken, provides a false positive for a result when you perform the operation, and doesn't work."
"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."
"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."
"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."
"Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation."
"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."
"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."
"There is a slight barrier to entry if you are used to using Ansible, since it is Ruby-based."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Despite the cost, it is worth the investment."
"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."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee."
"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."
"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."
"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."
"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 using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."
"Pricing for Chef is high."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Media Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
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?
The licensing cost is zero for Chef if you are using the free version. They have developed other versions, such as SaaS-based and self-managed. For the SaaS-based version, it is $59 per node per ye...
What needs improvement with Chef?
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, o...
What is your primary use case for Chef?
We used Chef, the automation tool, as an Infrastructure as Code tool for configuration deployment, such as deploying patches on numerous servers, first on the development box, then on QA, and then ...
 

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: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.