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Buildkite 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

Buildkite
Ranking in Build Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 2.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitHub Actions is 10.0%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitHub Actions10.0%
Buildkite2.2%
Other87.8%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Hamza AlZa'Atreh - PeerSpot reviewer
Have great plugins, pipeline options and offer webhooks for integration
BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent. If you have some builds that don't require a private environment or support data, you can use their shared data. For example, with Buildkite, I can use self-hosted agents running on my infrastructure and public shared agents. I will pay for the production minutes used as the production agent. For instance, if my job runs for ten minutes, I will be charged for ten minutes of usage.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with various environments and cloud providers enhances automation
I use GitHub Actions for CI/CD pipelines. I automate infrastructure, deployment, and all processes. Most companies use CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub Actions is one of the tools available for this purpose The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is that it is completely free. It can be integrated…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."
"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution can be considered as a very well-polished platform with a really great UI."
"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."
"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."
"Buildkite makes it easier to conduct deployment. When I merge a PR in Buildkite, it automatically starts the deployment process. It used to be challenging to shift code from the development branch to the testing branch because I had to follow up with multiple developers. Previously, I was dependent on the DevOps team and developers to handle deployments, but now it allows me to deploy the solutions myself.This has made it much easier for me to handle both non-production and production environments."
"GitHub Actions can be easily configured, especially for environment variables and secrets. The UI is understandable and user-friendly for setting up CI/CD pipelines. I prefer tools like GitLab, where the pipeline starts quickly and is accessible near the commits for easy access. However, many CI/CD tools are interchangeable due to similar features of GitHub Actions and other similar tools."
"We can trigger files manually or automate processes."
"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."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."
"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"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."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
 

Cons

"Based on the load, the agents can be scaled up and scaled down, and while they are scaling up, sometimes they just get stuck."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"The product must provide better integration with other tools."
"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."
"My company has had problems with the tool's parallel running and execution time. The testing framework also has some limitations. The tool cannot do everything."
"It gets very complex if you want the tool to scale automatically."
"There is a need for rework occasionally, and issues like syntax errors can occur multiple times, especially when manual changes are made in AWS or Amazon Connect that are not captured in the code."
"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
"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 primary area for improvement I see is in artifact management, especially for saving screenshots or videos from failed tests or data-driven actions. Currently, the configuration for saving these artifacts is complex."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."
"There could be more integration options with different platforms."
"We can leverage this database tool to manage everything within our environment and data burners, allowing for customization and execution. An additional advantage is the capability to modify aspects like file size, making processes more efficient and faster across the pipelines. Regarding improvements or implementations, I believe there should be enhancements made to the deployment tool. It should be integrated as part of the solution. Infrastructure-wise, we already have tools like GitHub and RobSpot, and data enables us to automate various processes, which is quite beneficial. As for further enhancements, I'm uncertain. I've shared everything I know. However, if there's something specific you'd like to see in future releases, a feature that may not exist yet but would be desirable, I can't provide any input on that matter."
"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We used the solution’s free version."
"Buildkite is known to be cheaper than GitHub Workflows, which is considered a standard in the industry. It can be cost-effective, especially for organizations that heavily utilize Docker and containerization, because every code change triggers a new build. Its integration with AWS, particularly with ECR, and its caching capabilities with layers are powerful features."
"I find Buildkite cost-effective as it has definitely increased my productivity, especially on the deployment side. It saved a lot of my time and improved data management because I can handle different environments myself now."
"I don't think the tool is expensive."
"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."
"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"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 tool's price is okay and reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Newspaper
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?
One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes...
What is your primary use case for Buildkite?
I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create fil...
What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?
With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability ...
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?
Frankly, I cannot imagine something that could be improved in GitHub Actions; there's a lot of capabilities, and the feature set is more advanced than we use. The pricing is high for the advanced s...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.