No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

GitHub Actions vs Harness comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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

GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Cloud Cost Management (8th), Feature Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 7.1%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Harness is 4.6%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitHub Actions7.1%
Harness4.6%
Other88.3%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at ENTERPRISE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS LIMITED
Has supported repository management and demonstrates potential in workflow flexibility
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas concerning deeper capabilities akin to those provided by Jenkins and Azure DevOps. Given the evolving nature of technology, there are potential improvements GitHub Actions can focus on, including enhancing support and reliability to match its competitors.
MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The level of automation achievable is really good. So, the custom workflow creation and Marketplace Actions improved our project's efficiency."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is the ability to automate various tasks, such as backups and deployments, to ease the development workflow."
"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."
"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"Harness positively impacts our organization by reducing deployment time, improving release confidence, and lowering operational overhead during deployment."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Approximately seventy-five percent time was reduced in case of deployment and around sixty to sixty-five percent time was reduced while troubleshooting it."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
 

Cons

"GitHub sometimes makes it difficult to debug actions."
"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."
"The UI could be better."
"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."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."
"Improvements could be made in terms of time-saving capabilities and resolving potential complexities in centralized workflows."
"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."
"Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"The initial setup can be complex and time-consuming, and the advanced features may require some learning time due to a steep learning curve."
"The licensing cost can be significant for larger teams, which should be taken into account."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"There are some UI components that can be improved."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"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."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
913,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas con...
What is your primary use case for GitHub Actions?
The main use case for GitHub Actions is maintaining enterprise repositories in private for security reasons, because we have multiple enterprise clients. We're using the premium GitHub service for ...
What needs improvement with Harness?
There are some UI components that can be improved. The needed UI improvements include more graphs, more history, the ability to create pipelines through the UI, and more interactions, with UI compo...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is to create pipelines, deploy applications, and manage security pipelines. I use Harness to deploy applications to EC2 instances and Kubernetes instances, and I create...
What advice do you have for others considering Harness?
My advice for others looking into using Harness is to use AI capabilities, create pipelines, and then use it to deploy. Harness is a good tool. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Armory
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Find out what your peers are saying about GitHub Actions vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.