Buildkite vs Travis CI comparison

Buildkite and Travis CI are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Travis CI is ranked #21 with an average rating of 6.0. Buildkite holds a 2.2% mindshare in BA, compared to Travis CI’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

514 Views
514 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Travis CI

Read 2 Travis CI reviews

415 Views
415 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

Buildkite

Travis CI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Travis CI and Buildkite compete in the CI/CD tools market. Buildkite often has the advantage due to its robust features and suitability for larger teams and complex projects.

Features: Travis CI provides robust automation, strong integration capabilities, and a straightforward setup process. Buildkite offers significant customization, scalability, and security features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Travis CI is known for easy installation and accessible customer support. Buildkite, due to its self-hosted model, requires more setup but offers extensive documentation and responsive service for efficient deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Travis CI has competitive pricing, making it attractive for smaller enterprises. Buildkite, with higher setup costs, offers refined control and scalability, providing a stronger ROI for larger organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

September 2025

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Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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

Travis CI

Ranking in Build Automation

21st

Average Rating

6.0

Reviews Sentiment

3.1

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 Travis CI is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Buildkite	2.2%
Travis CI	1.3%
Other	96.5%

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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Pravar Agrawal

Senior SRE at IBM

YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing

Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

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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's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."

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

"The documentation is quite helpful."

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

"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."

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

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

More Buildkite pros

"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."

Cons

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

More Buildkite cons

"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We used the solution’s free version."

"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."

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Newspaper

20%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

10%

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

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 Travis CI?

I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.

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What needs improvement with Travis CI?

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What is your primary use case for Travis CI?

Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis workflows are integrated with any changes in my code. It will have different jobs, ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 36% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 15% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 14% of the time

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 13% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 12% of the time

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Tekton vs Travis CI

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

September 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

Easily sync your GitHub projects with Travis CI and you'll be testing your code in minutes. Travis CI for private repositories has plans for every size project. With Travis CI testing your open source project is 100% free.

Travis CI

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, GitHub and others in Build Automation. Updated: September 2025.

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