Buildkite vs GitHub Actions comparison

Buildkite and GitHub are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while GitHub is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.5. Buildkite holds a 1.6% mindshare in BA, compared to GitHub’s 11.4% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of GitHub users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

344 Views
344 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

GitHub Actions

Read 22 GitHub Actions reviews

2,693 Views
2,693 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

GitHub Actions

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GitHub Actions and Buildkite are competing in the CI/CD space. GitHub Actions has an upper hand due to its ease of integration within the GitHub ecosystem and cost-effectiveness.

Features: GitHub Actions offers seamless integration with GitHub, automates workflows, and provides an intuitive setup process. Buildkite allows extensive customization, self-hosted runners, and scalability suitable for complex CI/CD requirements.

Room for Improvement: GitHub Actions could enhance support for AI projects and improve manual intervention requirements. Buildkite might benefit from reducing its learning curve, optimizing integration with Monorepos, and enhancing documentation for setup complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitHub Actions simplifies deployment through its deep integration with GitHub, minimizing infrastructure management. Buildkite offers control over infrastructure with self-hosted environments and personalized support, suitable for complex needs but demands more deployment management.

Pricing and ROI: GitHub Actions uses a pay-as-you-go model, ideal for smaller teams within the GitHub ecosystem. Buildkite offers flat-rate pricing, appealing to larger organizations requiring predictable costs for complex pipelines, providing a compelling ROI despite higher upfront expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

July 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitHub Actions

Ranking in Build Automation

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 1.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitHub Actions is 11.4%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Prabin Silwal

Senior Engineering Consultant at ASSURANCE IQ, INC.

Has an easy setup phase while also offering good documentation

The problem we are facing sometimes is that we have lots of unit testers, and we have to wait about ten minutes to complete all of those because we want to run or find a way. It's not directly due to the limitation of the tool as well, but when we are running the spec, we want to run those parallelly and decrease the downtime so that our deployment can be faster. I think that one is not possible only due to the it also depends upon the unit test framework as well we are using. When we tried with the multiple test cases in a parallel manner, there were some dependencies, and one over another kept failing. We make those sequential calls. The aforementioned area consists of the issues my company faced while using Buildkite.

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

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…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."

"Using Buildkite, it's much easier to manage pipelines. It's straightforward to understand what each pipeline returns, making it easy to edit configurations, such as passwords. Although there is a steep learning curve initially, the overall process is still comprehensible. Additionally, Buildkite offers features like hooks and triggers; for example, an action in the app can automatically trigger a pipeline. These elements can be added to specific pipelines, ensuring the entire process is automated."

"You don't have to set up an agent in Buildkite like in Jenkins."

"The tool is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."

"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."

"It is a stable solution."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

More Buildkite pros

"The product's most beneficial feature is the ability to create workflows within the solution."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."

"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."

"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."

"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."

"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."

"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."

"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."

More GitHub Actions pros

Cons

"Buildkite has issues while creating or extending branches as only the first five builds in the user-interface can be accessed and post that one has to access the next builds by remembering branch names without pagination which can be inconvenient."

"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."

"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."

"Based on the load, the agents can be scaled up and scaled down, and while they are scaling up, sometimes they just get stuck."

"Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run."

"As a newbie, I think BuildKite has several issues. For example, it can't get the status of a PR once it's closed. The syntax is easy to use, but updating a pipeline requires administrator settings, and viewing pipelines for others isn't straightforward."

"It gets very complex if you want the tool to scale automatically."

"The product must provide better integration with other tools."

More Buildkite cons

"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."

"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."

"In terms of improvements, I think better logging for debugging purposes would be helpful, especially for complex workflows."

"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."

"Improvements could be made in terms of time-saving capabilities and resolving potential complexities in centralized workflows."

"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."

"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 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."

More GitHub Actions cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."

"We used the solution’s free version."

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"I don't think the tool is expensive."

"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."

"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."

"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."

"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."

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."

"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."

"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."

"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."

"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

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Tekton vs GitHub Actions

Compared 32% of the time

Harness vs GitHub Actions

Compared 15% of the time

Bamboo vs GitHub Actions

Compared 13% of the time

TeamCity vs GitHub Actions

Compared 9% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitHub Actions

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

GitHub Actions

July 2025

Download GitHub Actions product report

Overview

Buildkite is a powerful CI/CD tool praised for its scalability and flexibility in automating and managing complex workflows across multiple platforms. Its integration capabilities with various systems and supports for secure, customizable environments enhance development efficiency and data privacy. The feedback highlights significant boosts in productivity and operational cost reduction, making Buildkite a strategic asset for businesses aiming to streamline development tasks and align with organizational goals.

Buildkite

GitHub Actions streamlines CI/CD processes with an intuitive YAML workflow and robust automation, enhancing efficiency and integration with third-party tools and cloud providers.

GitHub Actions automates development pipelines, supports scalable public and private runners, and manages secure secrets. This tool integrates seamlessly with platforms like AWS, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, and Databricks. It enhances DevOps workflows with reliable task automation. Users note areas for UI and deployment tool improvements, artifact management simplification, and additional programming language support. Debugging complexity and hosting agent transitions pose challenges, along with integration enhancements for tools like OneDrive.

What are GitHub Actions' key features?

YAML Workflow Creation: Simplifies configuration with intuitive YAML.
CI/CD Integration: Provides seamless integration within DevOps pipelines.
Automation Capabilities: Automates tasks with minimal manual intervention.
Third-Party Tool Compatibility: Works well with diverse tools and platforms.
Secure Secrets Management: Protects sensitive information effectively.

What benefits do users find in GitHub Actions?

Enhanced Performance: Boosts task execution speed and reliability.
Scalability: Supports growth with flexible runner options.
Improved Release Cycles: Ensures consistent updates and deployments.
Workflow Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks, increasing operational efficiency.

Companies in tech and software development frequently utilize GitHub Actions for integrating, deploying, and versioning projects. It is often employed for deploying applications to cloud environments like AWS and Kubernetes, managing extensive CI/CD workflows, and automating test and security operations, thereby streamlining production cycles across industries.

GitHub

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

July 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

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