Buildkite vs GitHub Actions comparison

Buildkite and GitHub are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Buildkite is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while GitHub is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5. Buildkite holds a 3.1% mindshare in BA, compared to GitHub’s 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Buildkite users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of GitHub users who would recommend it.

Buildkite

Read 14 Buildkite reviews

846 Views
829 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

GitHub Actions

Read 23 GitHub Actions reviews

3,083 Views
3,083 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Buildkite

GitHub Actions

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GitHub Actions and Buildkite are competing in the CI/CD space. GitHub Actions has an upper hand due to its ease of integration within the GitHub ecosystem and cost-effectiveness.

Features: GitHub Actions offers seamless integration with GitHub, automates workflows, and provides an intuitive setup process. Buildkite allows extensive customization, self-hosted runners, and scalability suitable for complex CI/CD requirements.

Room for Improvement: GitHub Actions could enhance support for AI projects and improve manual intervention requirements. Buildkite might benefit from reducing its learning curve, optimizing integration with Monorepos, and enhancing documentation for setup complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitHub Actions simplifies deployment through its deep integration with GitHub, minimizing infrastructure management. Buildkite offers control over infrastructure with self-hosted environments and personalized support, suitable for complex needs but demands more deployment management.

Pricing and ROI: GitHub Actions uses a pay-as-you-go model, ideal for smaller teams within the GitHub ecosystem. Buildkite offers flat-rate pricing, appealing to larger organizations requiring predictable costs for complex pipelines, providing a compelling ROI despite higher upfront expenses.

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

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

February 2026

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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

GitHub Actions

Ranking in Build Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 GitHub Actions is 8.1%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitHub Actions	8.1%
Buildkite	3.1%
Other	88.8%

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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Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

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

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

"It is a stable solution."

More Buildkite pros

"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."

"It is a very stable solution as we have not faced any issues."

"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."

"I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations."

"We can trigger files manually or automate processes."

"GitHub Actions provides workflows that allow for process automation, enabling operations such as build, deploy, and scale applications."

"The most valuable features of GitHub Actions include its seamless integration within GitHub, which simplifies the CI/CD pipeline setup. The scalability of using different types of runners—both public and private runners—enhances deployment flexibility."

"It is easy to use, especially if you are accustomed to using GitHub."

More GitHub Actions pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Buildkite cons

"The UI could be better."

"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."

"In our company, procedures or rules need to be completed, which is not a problem with GitHub Actions but with our process."

"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."

"GitHub sometimes makes it difficult to debug actions."

"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."

"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."

"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."

More GitHub Actions 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."

"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."

"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."

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."

"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."

"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."

"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."

"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."

"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."

"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."

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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

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

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	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	11

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about GitHub Actions?

I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

Harness vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

Tekton vs Buildkite

Compared 10% of the time

CircleCI vs Buildkite

Compared 8% of the time

Nx vs Buildkite

Compared 8% of the time

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Tekton vs GitHub Actions

Compared 20% of the time

Harness vs GitHub Actions

Compared 13% of the time

TeamCity vs GitHub Actions

Compared 8% of the time

Bamboo vs GitHub Actions

Compared 7% of the time

Bitrise vs GitHub Actions

Compared 5% of the time

More GitHub Actions Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite

January 2026

Download Buildkite product report

Buyer's Guide

GitHub Actions

January 2026

Download GitHub Actions 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

GitHub Actions streamlines CI/CD processes with an intuitive YAML workflow and robust automation, enhancing efficiency and integration with third-party tools and cloud providers.

GitHub Actions automates development pipelines, supports scalable public and private runners, and manages secure secrets. This tool integrates seamlessly with platforms like AWS, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, and Databricks. It enhances DevOps workflows with reliable task automation. Users note areas for UI and deployment tool improvements, artifact management simplification, and additional programming language support. Debugging complexity and hosting agent transitions pose challenges, along with integration enhancements for tools like OneDrive.

What are GitHub Actions' key features?

YAML Workflow Creation: Simplifies configuration with intuitive YAML.
CI/CD Integration: Provides seamless integration within DevOps pipelines.
Automation Capabilities: Automates tasks with minimal manual intervention.
Third-Party Tool Compatibility: Works well with diverse tools and platforms.
Secure Secrets Management: Protects sensitive information effectively.

What benefits do users find in GitHub Actions?

Enhanced Performance: Boosts task execution speed and reliability.
Scalability: Supports growth with flexible runner options.
Improved Release Cycles: Ensures consistent updates and deployments.
Workflow Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks, increasing operational efficiency.

Companies in tech and software development frequently utilize GitHub Actions for integrating, deploying, and versioning projects. It is often employed for deploying applications to cloud environments like AWS and Kubernetes, managing extensive CI/CD workflows, and automating test and security operations, thereby streamlining production cycles across industries.

GitHub

Buyer's Guide

Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

February 2026

Free Report: Buildkite vs. GitHub Actions

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