Buildkite vs IBM Rational Build Forge comparison

Buildkite and IBM are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while IBM is ranked #23. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

254 Views
99 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

IBM Rational Build Forge

Read 2 IBM Rational Build Forge reviews

434 Views
331 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

IBM Rational Build Forge

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM Rational Build Forge and Buildkite are competing products in build and deployment automation. Buildkite is preferred for its flexibility and modern integration capabilities.

Features: IBM Rational Build Forge offers extensive automation capabilities, build management, and sophisticated scheduling. Buildkite provides seamless cloud integration, pipeline configuration, and scalability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Buildkite has a straightforward deployment model, backed by responsive customer service and community resources. IBM Rational Build Forge offers a complex deployment process with deep integration options and IBM's support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Rational Build Forge requires a larger initial investment providing high ROI in large operations. Buildkite has an attractive pricing model for small to medium enterprises seeking cost-effective fast deployment.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. IBM Rational Build Forge Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. IBM Rational Build Forge

April 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

IBM Rational Build Forge

Ranking in Build Automation

23rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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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Amy DeLorge

CRM Program Release Manager at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center

Great reporting features and very functional

The solution could be more user friendly. Trying to train somebody on it can be difficult. If you're in this field, you kind of learn the tools, but trying to show a PM how to find report sheets to pull data was difficult. I had to show them how to write the queries and pull the data that they needed. It's not a layman's solution. If you're working with a programmer or with an architect, you won't have issues trying to relay how to utilize the tool. It was for those who cut the checks where there were problems enabling them to pull the data they required. I guess the answer is DevOps, but it depends on your environment. Just being able to sign into dashboards and get accurate results was my biggest thing with my PMs on my projects. They like charts and pie graphs, the ability to see things at a glance data where they could make decisions on the fly.

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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

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

"It is a stable solution."

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

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

"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."

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

"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."

"The solution can be considered as a very well-polished platform with a really great UI."

More Buildkite pros

"Very good reporting features."

"All features are useful. Our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool. It works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."

Cons

"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."

"Since we were using Buildkite for the first time, we had a lot of difficulty understanding how it worked. We didn't find any documentation from third parties; only Buildkite provided documentation. As a result, we faced a steep learning curve. After some time, it became much easier to use. Initially, understanding certain features, like the R integration, was challenging."

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

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

"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."

"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."

"The way Buildkite represents workflows can be challenging. It uses Directed Acyclic Graphs, and there's a trade-off between abstraction and understanding what goes wrong when something fails. When a layer of jobs breaks down, it can be difficult to identify the issue at first glance. Additionally, logging can be cumbersome. I prefer GitHub Workflows."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools."

"Not user friendly for the layman."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"We used the solution’s free version."

"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."

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

Information not available

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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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Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 55% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 23% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 21% of the time

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Jenkins vs IBM Rational Build Forge

Compared 100% of the time

More IBM Rational Build Forge Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

April 2025

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

April 2025

Download IBM Rational Build Forge product report

Also Known As

No data available

Rational Build Forge

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

IBM Rational Build Forge is an adaptive execution framework that helps automate and standardize the software assembly process. Rational Build Forge helps teams standardize repetitive tasks, improve software quality and manage compliance mandates. This software scales to 25 seats. Rational Build Forge delivers:
Flexibility - gives developers self-service access to preconfigured build processes from within their integrated development environment (IDE). You can add IBM Rational software products to further enhance automation, reporting and integration.
Productivity - accelerates build and release cycles through iterative development, parallel processes and efficient use of hardware.
Compliance - simplifies compliance management with self-documenting audit trails and role-based security.
Compatibility - increases team efficiency with centralized build and release management using the tools you have today.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Cars.com

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. IBM Rational Build Forge

April 2025

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