Understand how Buildkite differs to CircleCI, why it’s a popular alternative.
Buildkite | CircleCI | |
---|---|---|
Product Type | HybridBuildkite provides a SaaS platform to define and visualize pipelines and an agent to execute jobs on customer-managed infrastructure. | SaaSCircleCI Cloud features fully SaaS pipelines and task execution. |
Self-Hosted Jobs | Universally AvailableBy default, Buildkite agents are self-hosted. Open source, no limits. | Premium Customers OnlySelf-hosted options are available only in enterprise plans. |
Pipeline Creation | FlexiblePipelines can be defined via an in-UI step builder, dynamically via CLI utility, or as a YAML file in your source repository. | RigidDefine pipelines via a YAML configuration file in your repository. |
Job Concurrency | UnlimitedSelf-hosted agents give you full control to parallelize your CI tasks at any scale. | MeteredFree plans can run one job at a time, with concurrency limits in higher tiers. |
Plugin Support | CustomizableSupport for buildkite-hosted, github-hosted, or custom user-defined plugin sources. | CuratedCircleCI favors built-in functionality over modular plugins. Additional pipeline automation can be imported from a CircleCI-hosted registry. |
Security & Privacy | Full ControlBuildkite’s self-hosted agent lets you keep sensitive data behind your firewall. When you host your runners, your code never leaves your servers! | Vendor DependentCircleCI runners check code into isolated ephemeral sandboxes on vender-hosted infrastructure. |
Pricing | StraightforwardBuildkite charges a per-seat price with the option of enterprise support at larger scale. | LayeredCircleCI charges a per-seat price bundled with credits used for purchasing time on hosted runners. Additional credits can be purchased as needed. Support is purchasable as an additional add-on |
Wherever you are in your CI journey, Buildkite has the capabilities to help you move faster than ever before.
Need to create a new pipeline? No problem! Our in-browser steps editor will take you from zero to building in just a few clicks. Our support for pipeline configuration in your version control makes migrating existing pipelines a breeze as well!
Want to turbo charge your builds? Our lightweight agent runs on your servers, VMs, or containers to ensure your builds are optimized for the hardware, software, and architecture needs of your specific applications.
Need to scale your build capacity in a hurry? Take advantage of cloud capabilities with the Elastic CI Stack, providing a workflow for autoscaling your CI workloads for maximum efficiency.