Buildkite vs CloudBees comparison

Buildkite and CloudBees are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while CloudBees is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. Buildkite holds a 3.1% mindshare in BA, compared to CloudBees’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of CloudBees users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

846 Views
829 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

CloudBees

Read 20 CloudBees reviews

1,769 Views
796 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

CloudBees

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 2025

CloudBees and Buildkite are significant players in the DevOps and CI/CD markets. While CloudBees has an edge for large-scale enterprises with its comprehensive deployment capabilities, Buildkite stands out for ease of use and cost-effectiveness, particularly appealing to smaller businesses and startups.

Features: CloudBees offers features like scalability for large teams, advanced security measures, and extensive integration with multiple platforms. It supports detailed pipeline creation and facilitates the entire DevOps lifecycle. Buildkite provides intuitive workflow management, simple step addition to pipelines, and efficient caching features for Docker containers. It is particularly known for its detailed logging and quick deployment capabilities.

Room for Improvement: CloudBees users experience performance issues when managing many pipelines simultaneously and cite the need for better server response times and improved UIs. Dependency on vendor support for updates is noted as a delay factor. Buildkite users face challenges with complex workflow representations and logging, requiring better support for third-party integrations and improved scalability options for agents.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudBees supports deployment across public, private, and on-premise clouds, providing flexibility, with generally well-received customer service noted for responsiveness. Buildkite offers robust public cloud deployment options and reliable support, although users mention repeated resolutions reliance on new versions indicating potential gaps in immediate issue resolutions.

Pricing and ROI: CloudBees is seen as pricey but justified by its comprehensive features providing significant ROI, especially for large enterprises seeking security and vendor support. In contrast, Buildkite offers cost-effective solutions, especially appealing for Docker workloads with its cheaper pricing model and self-hosted options. Its flexible user-based pricing makes it attractive for both large enterprises and cost-conscious smaller businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Buildkite vs. CloudBees Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. CloudBees

February 2026

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Helped 881,928 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

CloudBees

Ranking in Build Automation

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (11th), Value Stream Management Software (2nd), DevSecOps (5th), AI-Augmented Software-Testing Tools (2nd), Feature Management (2nd), AI Software Development (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 3.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudBees is 2.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudBees	2.2%
Buildkite	3.1%
Other	94.7%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Raed I.Habib

Senior DevOps Engineer at a newspaper with 5,001-10,000 employees

Easy-to-use and provides good documentation for managing agents

Buildkite has been pushing a lot of effort toward the plugin marketplace and plugin users, especially with the Kubernetes plugin that supports the scalability of agents. The flexibility of some plugins is somewhat limited. In the past, I used to modify the plugins according to my needs. Now, plugins support some sort of configuration or reconfiguration. I would love to see some features added in that direction and the plugin's use. I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation. The hooks are amazing and give me a lot of extra flexibility in many of the pipelines, but they're still limited in some areas.

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YashBrahmani

Senior Associate at BNP Paribas CIB

Offers a clear visualization and overview of workflows and helpful in managing CI/CD processes

Improvement in the sense that they can do better in terms of management of logs and stuff like that because the console logs are very extensive, and that causes a lot of storage issues. That is one of the things which is there. Also, with respect to the traditional platform and the modern platform, many things have upgraded, and it has quite improved. But when we talk about the performance of the agents, it’s still very crucial because it’s not up to par. It takes a lot of time to provision the agent and to finish the build because of the SSH connection and the JNLP connection. Due to that, sometimes the agent doesn’t get provisioned. Those are some of the blockers that meet up the time in terms of administering the instance.

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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

"It is a stable solution."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."

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

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

More Buildkite pros

"Scalability largely depends on how the tool is set up within your infrastructure"

"CloudBees updates its features frequently, so if we need something like SSL login, they enable it."

"The most valuable features are Java features, microservice communication, payment validation, Jenkins Sonar, management master to CloudBees, Blue Ocean, JobConfig, and support."

"It’s a very good tool for auditing your project pipelines as well."

"CloudBees is a user-friendly tool."

"The customer support is good. You get good representatives from CloudBees to help you and understand your requirements."

"CloudBees assists by automating tasks, previously done manually, in the pipeline setup."

"The security audit product offered by CloudBees is particularly beneficial in automating audit processes, which reduces the time developers spend on audits."

More CloudBees pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"The setup is somewhat complicated. You need a cloud architect and engineer to set it up properly. The initial setup will take time, so you need a good engineer and architect to handle it."

"If you're logged in and working for about thirty minutes and then go idle for five to ten minutes, Jenkins will prompt you to re-authenticate."

"The platform could integrate better with other tools and support external tools directly."

"Sometimes, there are performance issues, however, they may be due to our organization's configuration."

"There are connection issues with CloudBees, specifically between Sybase and CloudBees. W"

"We've noticed occasional issues with folder permissions changing unexpectedly. Specifically, permissions sometimes shift from the CloudBees user to the root user. This can cause pipeline failures, as pipelines require the correct CloudBees user permissions to execute properly."

"The problem with CloudBees is that when you merge it, the pipelines would randomly fail multiple times."

"The user interface of CloudBees is good but could be even more intuitive. Improving the user-friendliness of the interface and having simpler setup configurations would greatly benefit new users."

More CloudBees cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."

"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."

"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."

"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Newspaper

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Legal Firm

Computer Software Company

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	1
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	17

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudBees?

There are connection issues with CloudBees, specifically between Sybase and CloudBees. We often encounter connection problems, and there are issues with the pipelines.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudBees?

We use CloudBees for deploying the code in higher environments, such as QA, C2, staging, and production.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering CloudBees?

I would recommend CloudBees to others because building jobs is much easier than with other solutions.

See all answers

Comparisons

GitHub Actions vs Buildkite

Compared 21% of the time

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 9% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 9% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 9% of the time

CircleCI vs Buildkite

Compared 8% of the time

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GitLab vs CloudBees

Compared 8% of the time

Digital.ai Release vs CloudBees

Compared 7% of the time

Harness vs CloudBees

Compared 7% of the time

CircleCI vs CloudBees

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs CloudBees

Compared 7% of the time

More CloudBees Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

February 2026

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudBees

February 2026

Download CloudBees 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

CloudBees provides a highly scalable and secure platform that supports seamless integration and automation across multiple environments. It excels in managing Jenkins instances and offers flexible deployment options, enhancing efficiency for large teams.

CloudBees is recognized for its integration with Jenkins, SonarQube, and Ansible, allowing companies to leverage its robust automation capabilities for continuous integration and deployment. With its strong support for Docker and Kubernetes, teams benefit from streamlined code management and operational efficiency. Its scalable architecture, real-time feedback, and premium vendor support help manage large-scale applications and microservices. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with pipeline setup, service availability, and GUI accessibility, which suggest room for improvement in these areas.

What are the key features of CloudBees?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies navigation and improves workflow efficiency.
Robust scalability: Supports growth and large-scale application management.
Advanced security: Ensures data security and compliance.
Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with Jenkins, SonarQube, and Ansible.
Flexible deployment: Adapts to different infrastructure needs across environments.

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Enhanced efficiency: Automation reduces manual workload.
Real-time feedback: Provides immediate insights into pipeline performance.
Vendor support: Offers assistance for troubleshooting and growth.
Scalable architecture: Accommodates business expansion requirements.

In tech and software industries, companies implement CloudBees for managing complex CI/CD pipelines. Its integration with DevOps tools facilitates automation and workflow optimization. Industries with large teams managing thousands of microservices use CloudBees to maintain high availability, streamline processes, and ensure security compliance, driving efficient production workflows.

CloudBees

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Capital One, PEGA, vistaprint, HSBC, BOSCH, Starbucks Coffee

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. CloudBees

February 2026

Free Report: Buildkite vs. CloudBees

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