CircleCI vs Tekton comparison

CircleCI and Google are both solutions in the Build Automation category. CircleCI is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.0, while Google is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.9. CircleCI holds a 3.5% mindshare in BA, compared to Google’s 7.9% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of CircleCI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Google users who would recommend it.

CircleCI

Read 7 CircleCI reviews

1,060 Views
1,039 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Tekton

Read 37 Tekton reviews

3,473 Views
3,473 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

CircleCI

Tekton

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

CircleCI and Tekton are competing products in the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) space. CircleCI has an advantage in ease of setup and customer support, whereas Tekton offers better customization and integration possibilities, appealing to users requiring flexibility and specific tooling support.

Features: CircleCI is noted for integration with third-party services, flexible scalability, and a library of pre-built integrations. It makes the CI/CD process simpler and is often favored for small to medium projects. Tekton takes a Kubernetes-native approach with strong integration support for cloud-native applications. Its customizable pipeline structures and flexibility meet enterprise-level needs well.

Room for Improvement: CircleCI could enhance its configuration options to better cater to enterprise environments and improve customization capabilities. Extending the user interface and further simplifying complex workflows would benefit its users. Tekton may improve on its technical setup requirements by reducing the complexity for newcomers. Enhanced documentation and clearer troubleshooting guidance can assist users in navigating its robust features more effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CircleCI offers a user-friendly setup process and comprehensive support, including clear documentation and direct support channels. It's an attractive option for organizations needing a quick deployment. Tekton, part of the Kubernetes ecosystem, demands more technical knowledge but is backed by a strong community, attracting those who value open-source ecosystems and community collaboration.

Pricing and ROI: CircleCI provides a tiered pricing model, making it cost-effective for startups and smaller teams, facilitating quick ROI through rapid deployment. However, Tekton, as an open-source tool, incurs costs related to setup and maintenance of infrastructure but offers potential long-term ROI due to its customization for specific business needs. This may prove a sound investment for organizations able to unlock its full capabilities.

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

Buyer's Guide

CircleCI vs. Tekton

December 2025

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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

CircleCI

Ranking in Build Automation

13th

Average Rating

6.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Software Development (200th)

Tekton

Ranking in Build Automation

2nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.5%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tekton is 7.9%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Tekton	7.9%
CircleCI	3.5%
Other	88.6%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

RahulArora

Global Head - DevOps and AIOps Startegist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Automated CI/CD pipelines have transformed deployment speed and collaboration for my teams

CircleCI offers fast parallel builds, easy integration with GitHub, and the ability to deploy applications on Kubernetes pods, which are amazing features. Fast parallel builds and GitHub integration have definitely helped my team reach faster time to market for our applications. Previously, our deployment used to take a couple of hours when doing it manually, but with CircleCI pipeline, our hours-long job has been converted to a couple of minutes. Its simplicity, fast pipeline execution, and strong GitHub and GitLab integrations are definitely unique advantages I discovered while using CircleCI. Time saved is one of the key aspects I have seen since using CircleCI. I have noticed fewer deployment errors, and it has helped me with easy debugging. Time saved is directly proportional to the cost and effort saved. CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by integrating directly with my Git repositories as a fully managed SaaS platform. CircleCI has a great impact on my team's collaboration and communication, with around 25 to 40 developers and DevOps engineers using it daily across multiple repositories and environments, helping us use it at scale. CircleCI has significantly increased our release frequency and deployment speed compared to before I started using it. CircleCI improves security for my organization by enforcing automated checks in the pipeline and securely managing secrets through environment variables while providing auditable deployments. CircleCI integrates seamlessly with my DevOps toolchain by connecting directly to GitHub, container registries, and my cloud platform AWS, allowing the entire CI/CD flow from code commit to deployment and monitoring with minimal manual effort.

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reviewer2741265

Software engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Benefit from a smooth learning curve and efficient adaptability

After seeing Jenkins and Tekton, I think Tekton is quite built on top of Kubernetes, so the learning curve is minimal. If you are working with Kubernetes, then OpenShift created Tekton on top of that, making it easily adaptable. Tekton is highly customizable. With Kubernetes, we can customize on our own and create custom builders. If teams have time and want to make enhancements, they can do it themselves. Whatever OpenShift is providing regarding Tekton is sufficient. It is easy to use because we don't need to write every pod step every time. A proper DevOps engineer can help once or twice, and development teams can easily adapt to that, make small shell script changes in the steps, understand the process, and work with it.

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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

"CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, saving substantial engineering hours and effort for me, which has directly improved my productivity and release velocity, reflecting incredible ROI."

"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."

"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."

"It's a stable product."

"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."

"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."

"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

"CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment."

"Tekton's inclusion in Kubernetes deployment offers better visibility on how Tekton is performing within a cluster. It is lightweight and not as heavy as Jenkins to maintain."

"The product's best feature is its ease of implementation."

"I would say the customization ability that Tekton provides is good."

"Its seamless integration with Kubernetes, being built on top of it and utilizing Custom Resource Definitions, ensures a smooth experience within Kubernetes environments exclusively."

"Tekton provides a feature where you can schedule the job."

"I like the branching and visualization tools for the pipeline."

"The most valuable features of Tekton include the reusability of tasks, the clean UI interface, and the binding of services and secrets."

"The feature that I like most about Tekton is that it is built for Kubernetes, so we can utilize our resources effectively."

More Tekton pros

Cons

"I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved."

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."

"A return on investment with CircleCI has not been observed, and no relevant metrics such as time saved or fewer employees needed can be shared."

"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."

"Billing is a mess."

"Tekton is a good product with all the features I need. There isn't anything that needs improvement."

"It would be better if Tekton could show the YAML file while it is running, similar to GitHub pipelines, to provide more visibility on what's happening."

"Tekton lacks integration capabilities compared to other CI/CD tools like Jenkins and Travis."

"Some of the tool's cons include its minimalistic dashboard, which lacks detailed information and control compared to other tools like Jenkins or GitLab. Additionally, it's primarily used by Japanese companies."

"The product's UI could be improved, as there are occasional latency issues. The triggering part, especially the CRD installation needs enhancement."

"Tekton should include many features to integrate event-driven pipelines."

"Improvement is needed in the documentation and the overall integration process."

"While Tekton is highly effective for Kubernetes-based setups, it might not suit users who require more control over bare-metal environments."

More Tekton cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

"It is entirely open source and free of charge."

"The product is free of cost."

"The product is free and open-source."

"Tekton is an open-source tool."

"The solution is open-source."

"The tool is open-source and free to use."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	22

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?

There is not much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that is managed by the legal team.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CircleCI?

CircleCI's Orbs are not as easy to use as they could be. If CircleCI implemented a function approach similar to GitHub Actions, it would be significantly better. CircleCI could be improved if it co...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering CircleCI?

For others looking into using CircleCI, study thoroughly about CircleCI's Orbs because they are quite complicated. The overall review rating for CircleCI is 6 out of 10.

See all answers

How does Tekton compare with Jenkins?

When you are evaluating tools for automating your own GitOps-based CI/CD workflow, it is important to keep your requirements and use cases in mind. Tekton deployment is complex and it is not very e...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tekton?

I didn't get the intention of scalability. Scalability means based on the load, it will automatically gain resources and run. The question of pipeline scalability remains unclear. It's quite easy t...

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What is your primary use case for Tekton?

We use Tekton for build and deployments. For LMP testing, we use the Tekton pipeline. We also use GitHub CI/CD. For infrastructure pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), we use Tekton. Previou...

See all answers

Comparisons

GitLab vs CircleCI

Compared 10% of the time

GitHub Actions vs CircleCI

Compared 9% of the time

TeamCity vs CircleCI

Compared 9% of the time

Jenkins vs CircleCI

Compared 6% of the time

Harness vs CircleCI

Compared 6% of the time

More CircleCI Competitors

GitHub Actions vs Tekton

Compared 27% of the time

GitLab vs Tekton

Compared 24% of the time

Jenkins vs Tekton

Compared 7% of the time

Harness vs Tekton

Compared 7% of the time

Travis CI vs Tekton

Compared 5% of the time

More Tekton Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

January 2026

Download CircleCI product report

Buyer's Guide

Tekton

January 2026

Download Tekton product report

Overview

CircleCI is a continuous integration and delivery platform that automates software development, streamlining the process for engineers and developers. It's valued for its ability to enhance development speed while maintaining high software quality.

Known for its robust CI/CD capabilities, CircleCI supports a wide range of programming languages and integrations, allowing teams to build and deploy code with efficiency and reliability. Its flexibility and automation features help teams quickly adapt to changing project requirements. CircleCI's cloud-based architecture ensures scalability and accessibility, making it an attractive option for modern development environments.

What are CircleCI's key features?

Continuous Integration: Automates code integration with testing to catch errors early.
Continuous Deployment: Simplifies the process of deploying code to production environments.
Customizable Workflows: Offers flexibility in defining build, test, and deployment stages.
Parallel Execution: Speeds up builds by running multiple tasks at once.
VCS Integration: Seamlessly integrates with platforms like GitHub and Bitbucket.

What benefits can users expect when using CircleCI?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines development workflows, reducing the time to market.
Improved Code Quality: Early error detection through automation increases overall quality.
Scalability: Ability to handle growing workloads as development needs evolve.
Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork through shared visibility and control over development processes.

In tech-driven industries, CircleCI enables efficient software development pipelines. Its ability to run automated tests and manage deployments effectively is particularly beneficial in fast-paced, innovation-driven fields like fintech, mobile app development, and SaaS platforms. Offering tools that meet high-demand environments, it supports teams in delivering timely and quality software products.

CircleCI

Tekton is a powerful yet flexible Kubernetes-native open-source framework for creating continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) systems. It lets you build, test, and deploy across multiple cloud providers or on-premises systems by abstracting away the underlying implementation details.

Google

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent

The Home Depot, PayPal, Target, HSBC, McKesson, Oncology Venture

Buyer's Guide

CircleCI vs. Tekton

December 2025

Free Report: CircleCI vs. Tekton

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