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AWS CodeBuild vs GitHub Actions 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
GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 GitHub Actions is 11.4%, up from 5.0% 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.
Muzammil Riaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers version control, automated script execution and reduces manual efforts
Its integration and deployment are quite easy. You need to create a YAML file in your project, detailing configurations within this file. It integrates itself, requiring you to specify titles, descriptions, parameters, and a trigger scheduler if needed. Apart from that, it's just a simple YAML file, so there's no need for complex configurations. In one project, I used GitHub to automate an application related to email marketing, focusing on actions for data scraping. This required running scripts daily, sometimes even twice or thrice a day. Manually executing these scripts is inefficient and overly reliant on individual team members. However, by integrating the project with GitHub Actions, we automated script execution. Triggers were set up to initiate the pipeline automatically with every new commit or push to a branch. Additionally, we implemented schedulers to run pipelines at predetermined times, like 9 PM or 2 PM. Another enhancement was executing five tests in parallel through data actions, making the process more robust. GitHub Actions also offers stepwise execution details, greatly aiding in understanding and managing workflows. I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"A valuable feature is the support for third-party repositories such as Bitbucket, GitLab, or GitHub."
"The integration is a good feature."
"The integration is a good feature."
"AWS CodeBuild reduces wait time and optimizes workflows."
"It works seamlessly with AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR)."
"The integration with other AWS services has streamlined our workflow."
"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"Creating workflows in YAML format is straightforward and easy to comprehend. This includes both understanding and writing workflows. Additionally, the downloading aspect for third-party instances can also be easily done. It's worth noting that vulnerability analysis and similar tasks should be part of our automation through data workflows. Furthermore, we can break down our processes step by step, starting from building, then moving on to analysis, testing, and finally deploying in production and the clear environment. All of these tasks can be efficiently managed within this platform."
"I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations."
"It offers numerous built-in features for pipeline management, release management, and even work item tracking on boards, which makes it a versatile tool that seamlessly integrates with hardware and facilitates optimization."
"The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is the ability to automate various tasks, such as backups and deployments, to ease the development workflow."
"I find the automation feature of GitHub Actions most valuable for our building processes. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, so there's no extra configuration needed, making the building process easy and efficient. GitHub Actions handles scalability well, automatically managing execution infrastructure without requiring additional configurations. We haven't yet explored GitHub Actions' support for AI projects, as we haven't used its AI capabilities."
"The most valuable features of GitHub Actions include its seamless integration within GitHub, which simplifies the CI/CD pipeline setup. The scalability of using different types of runners—both public and private runners—enhances deployment flexibility."
 

Cons

"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."
"The deployment fails sometimes."
"There have been times when CodeBuild has shown some instability, like bugs or breakdowns."
"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."
"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."
"They can further improve the integration of the Bitbucket for CodeBuild."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"The minor drawback of GitHub Actions is the management of the dashboard and pipeline runs, which needs improvement. The dashboard for running pipelines could be better."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"In terms of improvements, I think better logging for debugging purposes would be helpful, especially for complex workflows."
"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."
"There could be more integration options with different platforms."
"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."
"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Despite the cost, it is worth the investment."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
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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
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 GitHub Actions?
I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I would rate pricing a seven, which leans toward the expensive side. However, there is still value for money, and that's why we continue using it.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
I would need to check with my team about specific shortcomings. We still use Jenkins ( /products/jenkins-reviews ) for some tasks, which suggests there may be areas for improvement in GitHub Actions.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

CodeBuild
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS CodeBuild vs. GitHub Actions and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.