Bamboo vs Chef comparison

Atlassian and Progress Software are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Atlassian is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while Progress Software is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3. Atlassian holds a 4.3% mindshare in BA, compared to Progress Software’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 78% of Atlassian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Bamboo

Read 23 Bamboo reviews

1,865 Views
1,772 Comparison Views

78% willing to recommend

Chef

Read 25 Chef reviews

1,630 Views
424 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Bamboo

Chef

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Chef and Bamboo are competing solutions in the automation and deployment domain. Chef is appreciated for its ease of use and pricing, while Bamboo's comprehensive feature set justifies its higher investment, making it a preferred choice for those valuing functionality.

Features: Chef provides flexibility and scalability with its configuration management and automation capabilities. Bamboo offers seamless integration with Atlassian products and includes strong CI/CD features. Bamboo's advanced build and deployment pipelines provide greater control.

Room for Improvement: Chef could enhance its rollback process and improve compatibility with third-party deployment tools. Bamboo could simplify its learning curve and expand its user-friendly options for new users. Bamboo might benefit from broader integration support beyond Atlassian products.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef offers a straightforward deployment model with responsive customer service, minimizing setup time. Bamboo requires more advanced knowledge and time due to its complex deployment approach, but integrating with Atlassian's ecosystem enhances project management.

Pricing and ROI: Chef's lower setup costs and faster time to value provide a competitive advantage in terms of ROI, appealing to cost-sensitive users. Bamboo, while potentially more costly upfront, offers significant returns for organizations heavily integrated within the Atlassian suite, promising higher long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Bamboo vs. Chef Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Bamboo vs. Chef

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.4

Bamboo yielded high returns with low costs, boosting efficiency and saving time, translating to significant financial gains.

Sentiment score

6.7

Chef enhances work efficiency and ROI by streamlining deployment, reducing manual labor, and supporting scalable infrastructure management.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

The return has been far more hours saved than spent.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Chef has provided a return on investment, particularly in needing fewer employees, as the tool significantly reduces the amount of human work required for many tasks.

reviewer2787357

Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.

We have seen significant improvement in the time and the way we make changes to the infrastructure.

Sai Chandra

Principal Engineer at Wipro Limited

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.2

Bamboo support is generally helpful, but users note service delays and prefer forums; satisfaction rates 6 to 8 out of 10.

Sentiment score

5.8

Chef's customer support varies, with positive presales support, but challenges lead users to community forums and AWS for help.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

We usually work with the Chef teams and community support, who are always willing to assist.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.4

Bamboo's scalability is generally praised, but opinions vary based on remote agent technology and resource allocation challenges.

Sentiment score

7.3

Chef is praised for managing numerous nodes efficiently in diverse cloud environments despite some challenges with scaling.

That's why cloud solutions are becoming more popular because those things are very much automated.

Christo Louw

Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

We leverage both to achieve the best option possible for scaling.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Chef's scalability handles a large number of nodes easily, allowing us to manage hundreds of servers consistently using the same set of cookbooks.

reviewer2787357

Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.

Chef's scalability is evident as the public sector organization I work at serves a population of 5 million, and we have had no problems with scaling.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.8

Bamboo is generally stable, with most issues resolved by upgrades; users rate it highly for robustness and stability.

Sentiment score

7.7

Chef offers reliable performance, minimal disruptions, and effective scalability, with high stability ratings and strong community support.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

It is a good tool to work with, offering a strong developer experience and community support.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Chef is stable.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

In my experience, Chef is quite stable most of the time.

Sai Chandra

Principal Engineer at Wipro Limited

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Room For Improvement

Bamboo requires better user-friendliness, plugin support, integration, API improvements, and enhanced deployment models for enhanced developer experience.

Chef needs improved simplicity, integration, performance, documentation, better error messages, enhanced support, and usability for wider adoption.

Machine learning and AI are in big demand at the moment.

Christo Louw

Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Self-healing infrastructure continuously verifies that the system matches the desired state and can auto-correct configuration changes during the next run.

reviewer2787357

Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.

To improve Chef, making an interface with another language such as Python or Java that is well understood, as capable as Ruby, and even more widely adopted would demystify it a bit.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Setup Cost

Bamboo enterprise pricing starts at $2000, with agent-based fees rising to $120,000 annually, prompting calls for flexible models.

Enterprise users find Chef's pricing flexible but complex, appreciating AWS Marketplace integration despite preferring cheaper open-source alternatives.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

Licensing looks reasonable compared to the manual work of managing whole data centers with even 10,000 servers.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the organization.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Valuable Features

Bamboo offers seamless Atlassian integration, customizable CI/CD pipelines, extensive automation, and third-party support, valued for ease of use.

Chef automates configuration management, supporting scalability, ease of use, and efficiency, ideal for large-scale cloud environments with community support.

The main benefits Bamboo provides for me and my team are the automation to pick up code changes and automate the deployments, building images.

Christo Louw

Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Bamboo report

Security is a key aspect that Chef can automate, monitor new features that are available, and even do patches without you getting involved.

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Chef can manage hundreds or thousands of servers effortlessly, allowing for easy rollout of a single cookbook change to all machines.

reviewer2787357

Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.

When you have infrastructure as code and you already have everything apart from the environment-specific config, which you can specify in variables, then it is not only more repeatable and reliable, it is faster.

reviewer2787969

Technical Architecture Support at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

Categories and Ranking

Bamboo

Ranking in Build Automation

10th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Chef

Ranking in Build Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Release Automation (5th), Configuration Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Bamboo is 4.3%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Bamboo	4.3%
Chef	1.5%
Other	94.2%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Christo Louw

Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Automation has streamlined build and deployment workflows and provides clear project reporting

Regarding improvements for Bamboo, I can't think of anything right now. Bamboo is serving the purpose that we needed it for. I would say pipelines for model building could be an area of focus. However, I can't really comment on that because I haven't looked at Bamboo to assist with machine learning pipelines. If they haven't focused on building MLOps pipelines, that's definitely an area where they could assist businesses. I haven't looked at what Bamboo offers for MLOps, so it's possible that they've already built in features. Machine learning and AI are in big demand at the moment. If they haven't focused too much on MLOps, that's probably where they can improve.

Read full review

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges

One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.

Read full review

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Comparison Review

it_user217035

Senior iOS Developer at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 27, 2015

Bamboo vs. Jenkins

A biased and subjective comparison of Bamboo and Jenkins as CI servers for mobile development, based on practical experience with both. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (Delivery, Distribution) has been around for quite a while. But surprisingly enough on a global scale it pretty…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Bamboo?

Bamboo's integration with the rest of Atlassian's tech tools, like Jira, helps manage the end-to-end development and release process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bamboo?

I rate the solution's pricing a three out of five.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Bamboo?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chef?

I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terraform and so is Ansible. The only feedback would be if they could come up with an i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined application or appliance servers. A quick specific example of how I use Chef to...

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs Bamboo

Compared 18% of the time

GitHub Actions vs Bamboo

Compared 16% of the time

Tekton vs Bamboo

Compared 10% of the time

Harness vs Bamboo

Compared 8% of the time

GoCD vs Bamboo

Compared 5% of the time

More Bamboo Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

GitHub Actions vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 5% of the time

More Chef Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Bamboo

January 2026

Download Bamboo product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

January 2026

Download Chef product report

Overview

Bamboo is a continuous integration and delivery tool that ties automated builds, tests and releases together in a single workflow. It works great alongside JIRA and Stash providing a fully traceable deployment pipeline.

Atlassian

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Neocleus, MuleSoft, Interspire

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Buyer's Guide

Bamboo vs. Chef

December 2025

Free Report: Bamboo vs. Chef

Find out what your peers are saying about Bamboo vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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