Buildkite vs LaunchDarkly comparison

Buildkite and LaunchDarkly are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while LaunchDarkly is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of LaunchDarkly users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

254 Views
99 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

LaunchDarkly

Read 7 LaunchDarkly reviews

141 Views
37 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

LaunchDarkly

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

LaunchDarkly and Buildkite are competing products in the realm of software development tools. Buildkite holds the upper hand due to its comprehensive features offering valuable development pipeline management capabilities that justify its investment.

Features: LaunchDarkly provides robust feature flag management, detailed release management, and deployment process controls, which cater to dynamic release needs. Buildkite offers CI/CD capabilities, seamless integrations, and scalable build processes, with features designed for extensive build and test automation. It also includes intuitive UI, efficient workflow management, detailed logging, flexible pipeline configurations with hooks and triggers, and easy integration with AWS or Google Cloud Platform.

Room for Improvement: LaunchDarkly could enhance integration capabilities with third-party tools and improve documentation for complex deployments. It might also benefit from expanding user community support and enhancing analytics capabilities. Buildkite could improve onboarding processes by simplifying initial setup and providing clearer tutorials for hybrid deployment environments. It may also enhance its customer support experience and refine its cost management features to offer more predictability in pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LaunchDarkly, being cloud-based, offers simpler and quicker deployment options with a strong reputation for responsive support. It facilitates rapid setup with efficient customer service. Buildkite offers flexible hybrid deployment models, accommodating both cloud and on-premise options, providing teams full control over their infrastructure while potentially involving more setup effort. Its deployment flexibility in this regard becomes a significant advantage.

Pricing and ROI: LaunchDarkly features a straightforward pricing model appealing to teams in need of predictable costs, delivering positive ROI by reducing time to market and overheads in feature management. Buildkite, though incurring higher initial setup costs with a usage-based pricing model, achieves high ROI with powerful automation tools that enhance CI/CD efficiency, leading to significant resource savings and optimized processes. This makes Buildkite a cost-justifiable investment for development teams prioritizing automation and integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. LaunchDarkly Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. LaunchDarkly

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

LaunchDarkly

Ranking in Build Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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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James Bayhylle

Principal Technical Program Manager at ChowNow

Provides risk-free releases with control access and A/B testing

It allowed us to deploy faster. Despite having a rigorous code review process that slowed things down, once the code was reviewed, LaunchDarkly enabled safe deployments. If there was ever an issue, we could easily roll back a particular release by simply turning off the feature flag. When configuring and setting this up, begin with feature sets that are relatively small in scope. This helps build the necessary skills to leverage the product effectively while maintaining control over the blast radius, thus reducing risk to your customers and application in case of misconfiguration. As you gain more experience with the solution, it's crucial to have a process to manage feature flag sprawl, as mentioned earlier. Implementing a life cycle management system for your feature flags is essential. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten because of its intuitiveness and ease of use.

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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 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."

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

"If you join our team, it's very easy to learn Buildkite. We have our own boilerplate, so you can just clone it and add your configuration steps. Plus, we have documentation available to guide you through the process."

"It is a stable solution."

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

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

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

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

More Buildkite pros

"The initial setup is very easy."

"It has really helped during the series of product lines and faster deployment and faster development."

"I appreciate that we can release any feature in production and maintain control over it."

"The setup is easy."

"I like that it offers the ability to control the flags."

"The ability to turn off a flag is crucial when a task is not complete, especially if there is an error in a commit."

"From the development side, it allows us to manage multiple things."

Cons

"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns."

"The feature where one feature flag is dependent on another could be explored more for our usage."

"When the system has an excessive number of feature flags, managing them can become cumbersome."

"Right now, no improvements are needed."

"I have used LaunchDarkly for around two and a half years and I haven't faced any issues with it."

"Fetching information about multiple flags in a single action would be beneficial."

"I strongly believe they need to develop a strategy for handling situations where LaunchDarkly goes down."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LaunchDarkly?

I consider the pricing to be high.

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What needs improvement with LaunchDarkly?

We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns. I would rate LaunchDarkly a seven out of ten.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LaunchDarkly?

We use LaunchDarkly for managing feature flags. It helps manage the keys to control what users view on our screens.

See all answers

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Product Reports

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Buildkite

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

April 2025

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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

LaunchDarkly is acclaimed for its feature flag management, enabling safer, high-velocity code deployment and precise control over rollouts. Organizations use it to test, deploy, and manage features across user segments, performing canary releases and quick rollbacks without new code deployment. Users praise its robust flag system, real-time updates, detailed targeting, comprehensive analytics, and strong integration capabilities, significantly enhancing development efficiency and productivity.

LaunchDarkly

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. LaunchDarkly

April 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. LaunchDarkly

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