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GitHub Actions vs Harness comparison

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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

GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (14th), Cloud Cost Management (17th), Feature Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 6.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Harness is 4.8%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitHub Actions6.7%
Harness4.8%
Other88.5%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."
"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."
"GitHub Actions can be easily configured, especially for environment variables and secrets. The UI is understandable and user-friendly for setting up CI/CD pipelines. I prefer tools like GitLab, where the pipeline starts quickly and is accessible near the commits for easy access. However, many CI/CD tools are interchangeable due to similar features of GitHub Actions and other similar tools."
"GitHub Actions provides workflows that allow for process automation, enabling operations such as build, deploy, and scale applications."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"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 offers numerous built-in features for pipeline management, release management, and even work item tracking on boards, which makes it a versatile tool that seamlessly integrates with hardware and facilitates optimization."
"The product's most beneficial feature is the ability to create workflows within the solution."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Harness has impacted my organization positively; we use Harness in most of all deployments, so it is uniform."
"Approximately seventy-five percent time was reduced in case of deployment and around sixty to sixty-five percent time was reduced while troubleshooting it."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"Harness positively impacts our organization by reducing deployment time, improving release confidence, and lowering operational overhead during deployment."
 

Cons

"GitHub sometimes makes it difficult to debug actions."
"The pricing is high for the advanced security; GitHub Advanced Security for us is quite pricey."
"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
"I don't see major issues with GitHub Actions. We could benefit from a template-based approach."
"The only issue I have faced is with authorization, particularly when configuring the GitHub token correctly."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"There are some UI components that can be improved."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"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 product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
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 con...
What is your primary use case for GitHub Actions?
The main use case for GitHub Actions is maintaining enterprise repositories in private for security reasons, because we have multiple enterprise clients. We're using the premium GitHub service for ...
What needs improvement with Harness?
There are some UI components that can be improved. The needed UI improvements include more graphs, more history, the ability to create pipelines through the UI, and more interactions, with UI compo...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is to create pipelines, deploy applications, and manage security pipelines. I use Harness to deploy applications to EC2 instances and Kubernetes instances, and I create...
What advice do you have for others considering Harness?
My advice for others looking into using Harness is to use AI capabilities, create pipelines, and then use it to deploy. Harness is a good tool. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Armory
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Find out what your peers are saying about GitHub Actions vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.