Buildkite vs Tekton comparison

Buildkite and Google are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Google is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8. Buildkite holds a 2.2% mindshare in BA, compared to Google’s 9.6% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Google users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

514 Views
514 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Tekton

Read 37 Tekton reviews

3,786 Views
3,786 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Buildkite

Tekton

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Tekton and Buildkite compete in the CI/CD tools category. Tekton has the upper hand for Kubernetes-centric environments due to its serverless architecture and deep integration with Kubernetes, while Buildkite offers a more intuitive approach for workflow management through YAML.

Features: Tekton offers a cloud-native, Kubernetes-driven approach, excelling in customizability, scalability, and support for a variety of tasks within CI/CD pipelines. Its serverless architecture allows for cost-efficient operations with robust orchestration features. Buildkite is noted for intuitive workflow management through YAML files, efficient deployment across private spaces, and Docker integration, enhancing its efficiency in container management.

Room for Improvement: Tekton requires a deep understanding of Kubernetes, presenting challenges in setup for less experienced users. Improvements in storage and cluster-level logging, as well as debugging capabilities, are needed. Buildkite's workflow representation can be complex, and its logging system requires enhancements for smooth error identification. Auto-scalability and third-party tool integration remain areas for significant improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tekton's deployment is bolstered by Red Hat support, significantly benefiting on-premise and hybrid cloud environments with OpenShift. Although its open-source nature leans towards community reliance, documentation can be improved. Buildkite predominantly supports public cloud settings, making deployment straightforward, yet it lacks direct customer service as compared to Tekton's environment.

Pricing and ROI: Tekton's alignment with Kubernetes offers cost benefits, optimizing resources in Kubernetes clusters and eliminating licensing fees, making it ideal for cost-conscious environments. Buildkite's per-user pricing offers cost-effectiveness for larger enterprises but can be pricier for smaller ones. Its self-hosted option and integration with cloud platforms deliver substantial ROI by boosting deployment efficiency and productivity.

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

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Tekton

September 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

Tekton

Ranking in Build Automation

2nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

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 Tekton is 9.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Tekton	9.6%
Buildkite	2.2%
Other	88.2%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Zhi Fei Lee

Senior Software Engineer at Seek

A flexible and easy-to-use solution with documentation for CI/CD

I haven't used any other CI/CD platform before this, except for GitLab CI/CD, which I only used at a surface level. We would write some build steps and deploy them as soon as the tests were done. I'm unsure if GitLab has the same capabilities as Buildkite, particularly the step configuration feature that allows you to customize and control the move from one stage to the next (dev to staging, staging to production). I find this feature in Buildkite very easy to integrate and use. If you're considering using the solution for the first time, I suggest starting with GitLab CI/CD or GitHub Actions. Buildkite might be overkill for smaller projects or individual use. It's usually more expensive for new users but can be cost-effective for large-scale organizations. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

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Prasad Gupta

Software Engineer at IBM Software Labs

Efficient CI/CD management with significant cost reduction and a user-friendly setup

One area for improvement is the number of CRDs created during installation. Tekton currently creates 10 to 11CRDs, which can be overwhelming. Instead, it would be better to have just one CRD that can handle all the information and create other necessary components automatically. Additionally, more integration capabilities for security, such as DAST, SAST, and IAST, should be directly built into Tekton to facilitate easier implementation of security features.

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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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."

"It is a stable solution."

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

More Buildkite pros

"The flexibility of Tekton is the most valuable feature"

"It scales automatically based on the number of tasks or pipelines running, which is efficient and effective for our development needs."

"Tekton's most important feature is its cloud-native nature. Unlike Jenkins, which may not scale as efficiently, Tekton's CI pipeline can automatically scale up to handle increased workload demands without needing manual adjustments."

"It is an open-source tool, which makes it highly adaptable."

"The 'promote' feature is beneficial as it simplifies deployment processes by allowing easy promotion of applications to different environments without needing to re-run CI/CD processes."

"You can isolate most Tekton assets in the Kubernetes namespace for your feature branch. This allows you to freely change Tekton assets and objects to adapt to your feature branch and requirements."

"The platform's most valuable feature is its wireless capability, which makes installation easy and sets up the flow."

"We just have some configuration files, and it will handle the deployments smoother and faster compared to CI/CD 2.0."

More Tekton pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

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

"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."

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

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

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"When we started with Tekton around 2021 or early 2022, the community support was somewhat limited, which posed challenges when dealing with issues or debugging. We had to rely on Red Hat OpenShift support to overcome these challenges. However, I believe that these issues will naturally improve over timeas the developer community grows stronger. From a technical perspective, I haven't had the opportunity to deeply evaluate the product end-to-end, especially in the past year or so, when I've been less involved with it."

"Some of the tool's cons include its minimalistic dashboard, which lacks detailed information and control compared to other tools like Jenkins or GitLab. Additionally, it's primarily used by Japanese companies."

"The tool should improve in terms of output flexibility. It runs on a specific Kubernetes machine, and the persistent memory storage is on a single partition. Improving this aspect could make analyzing logs and toolchain outputs from external tools easier."

"One area for improvement is the number of CRDs created during installation. Tekton currently creates 10 to 11 CRDs, which can be overwhelming."

"The stability issues can be there."

"Configuring Tekton requires a deep understanding of Kubernetes, which can be difficult for developers."

"The user interface of Tekton could be improved."

"Tekton lacks sufficient documentation"

More Tekton cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"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 don't think the tool is expensive."

"We used the solution’s free version."

"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."

"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."

"Tekton is an open-source tool."

"It is entirely open source and free of charge."

"The product is free and open-source."

"The solution is open-source."

"The tool is open-source and free to use."

"The product is free of cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	22

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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How does Tekton compare with Jenkins?

When you are evaluating tools for automating your own GitOps-based CI/CD workflow, it is important to keep your requirements and use cases in mind. Tekton deployment is complex and it is not very e...

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What do you like most about Tekton?

Its seamless integration with Kubernetes, being built on top of it and utilizing Custom Resource Definitions, ensures a smooth experience within Kubernetes environments exclusively.

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What needs improvement with Tekton?

I didn't get the intention of scalability. Scalability means based on the load, it will automatically gain resources and run. The question of pipeline scalability remains unclear. It's quite easy t...

See all answers

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 36% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 15% of the time

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 13% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 12% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

More Buildkite Competitors

GitHub Actions vs Tekton

Compared 32% of the time

GitLab vs Tekton

Compared 26% of the time

Harness vs Tekton

Compared 7% of the time

Jenkins vs Tekton

Compared 7% of the time

GoCD vs Tekton

Compared 2% of the time

More Tekton Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

October 2025

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

Tekton

September 2025

Download Tekton 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

Tekton is a powerful yet flexible Kubernetes-native open-source framework for creating continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) systems. It lets you build, test, and deploy across multiple cloud providers or on-premises systems by abstracting away the underlying implementation details.

Google

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

The Home Depot, PayPal, Target, HSBC, McKesson, Oncology Venture

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. Tekton

September 2025

Free Report: Buildkite vs. Tekton

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