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Buildkite vs GitLab comparison

 

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

Buildkite
Ranking in Build Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (8th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (5th), Rapid Application Development Software (9th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
 

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 GitLab is 9.0%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitLab9.0%
Buildkite3.1%
Other87.9%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Raed I.Habib - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Role-based workflows have transformed daily deployments and improve team collaboration
GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process. The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps. The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly. For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities. GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother. Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The documentation is quite helpful."
"Buildkite allows us to build automations and integration tasks effectively."
"Using Buildkite, it's much easier to manage pipelines. It's straightforward to understand what each pipeline returns, making it easy to edit configurations, such as passwords. Although there is a steep learning curve initially, the overall process is still comprehensible. Additionally, Buildkite offers features like hooks and triggers; for example, an action in the app can automatically trigger a pipeline. These elements can be added to specific pipelines, ensuring the entire process is automated."
"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."
"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."
"The solution can be considered as a very well-polished platform with a really great UI."
"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 is simple and has no learning curve. If you know YAML, you can master it. It is simple to learn."
"The CI/CD process is very efficient."
"The initial setup of GitLab is pretty simple, with no complications."
"GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks, and since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"GitLab's source control is excellent."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"The solution makes the CI/CD pipelines easy to execute."
"GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks, and since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother."
 

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."
"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."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud 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."
"It gets very complex if you want the tool to scale automatically."
"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."
"Most of our projects involve both front-end and back-end development. We write the code and then create a file to set up our process, including specifying the tests we want to run. Before deploying to production, we need to install and configure certain things. We need something like Docker Pro, but I'm unsure about that. I'm familiar with the steps for using Buildkite for this process. We start by defining which tests to run."
"The solution could improve by providing more integration into the CI/CD pipeline, an autocomplete search tool, and more supporting documentation."
"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."
"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."
"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."
"There are missing search features, particularly when searching repositories or applying filters. Additionally, I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing with variable environments."
"GitLab should enhance its GitOps capability as they are currently using FluxCD, however, Argo CD is better and offers more features. GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"GitLab could consider introducing a code-scanning tool. Purchasing such tools from external markets can incur charges, which might not be favorable. Integrating these features into GitLab would streamline the pipeline and make it more convenient for users."
 

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."
"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."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"We used the solution’s free version."
"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 solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"We are using the open-source version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Newspaper
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
 

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...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The setup cost was moderate and not very high. For GitLab SaaS, the initial setup cost was minimal, while self-managed GitLab involved infrastructure, VM storage backups, runner configuration, and ...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain. YAML syntax is strict, and errors are easy to make, while debugging pipeline logic ca...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.