Knapsack Pro

Buildkite vs Gitlab CI comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Buildkite and Gitlab CI?

Buildkite

https://buildkite.com

Gitlab CI

https://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/
Unique feature

Runs on own infrastructure, API

AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS / On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for open source projects and selected organizations

Yes

Very generous free plans for both the SaaS version as well as the on premise version.

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clearly defined monthly and annual plans

Yes

Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions.

Support / SLA

Yes

Depending on the plan, ranging from community support, all the way to an assigned Technical Manager, SLAs and live chat support.

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

Paralellism
Every CI servers tends to address this differently (parallel, distributed, build matrix). Some of it is just marketing, and some is just nuance. For this table, parallel means that tasks can be run concurrently on the same machine, distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines
How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro

Yes

Run an unlimited number of concurrent agents, and an unlimited number of concurrent jobs. You can run your tests in isolated Docker container per agent.

Yes

Easily configure jobs you want to be run in parallel via the YML config file (gitlab-ci.yml)

Distributed builds
distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines
How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro

Yes

Run an unlimited number of concurrent agents, and an unlimited number of concurrent jobs

Yes

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Since the agents run on your own infra, you're free to do whatever

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

Analytics / Status overview
Analytics and overview referrs to the ability to, at a glance, see what's breaking (be it a certain task, or the build for a specific project)

Yes

The Buildkite UI features great vizualisations that feature build times, error rates, and more.

Yes

Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on

Yes

Yes

Self-hosted option

No

Yes

Hosted plans / SaaS

Yes

Yes

Build pipelines
A continuous delivery pipeline is a description of the process that the software goes through from a new code commit, through testing and other statical analysis steps all the way to the end-users of the product.

Yes

Pipelines are defined using an Yaml config file and allow for great flexibility in defining what each step of the process does.

Yes

Defined via YML config files

Reports
Reports are about the abilty to see specific reports (like code coverage or custom ones), but not necesarily tied in into a larger dashboard.

Yes

Yes

Ecosystem
Besides the official documentation and software, is there a large community using this product? Are there any community-driven tools / plugins that you can use?

Yes

Integrations for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket as well as SSO support (Google Suite, SAML, GraphQL API). Growing number of community plugins: https://buildkite.com/plugins

Yes

Specific language support: Ruby
Some CI servers have built-in support for parsing RSpec or Istanbul output for example and we mention those. Some others make it even easier by detecting Gemfiles or package.json and automate parts of the process for the developer.

Yes

You can find useful plugins like https://github.com/sj26/rspec-buildkite https://github.com/ticky/simplecov-buildkite etc

Yes

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Ruby specific need that may arise.

Specific language support: JavaScript

No

Yes

Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Javascript specific need that may arise.

Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)

Yes

Integrations for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket as well as SSO support (Google Suite, SAML, GraphQL API)

Yes

Plenty of third party integrations available throughout GitLab, most notably Kubernetes and GitHub, but also plenty of others: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/README.html

API
Custom integreation is available, via an API or otherwise, it's mentioned separately as it allows further customization than any of the Ecosystem/Integration options

Yes

Great GraphQL API, allows building your own dashboard with ease

Yes

Provides a REST API and a (new) GraphQL API, with plans to maintain the GraphQL API only going forward. Allows doing almost anything that can be done via the interface, at least in terms of CI needs.

Auditing

Yes

Yes

Additional notes

The Auto DevOps feature might be interesting to people looking for a very hands-off experience with getting a CI/CD process up and running https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/

Buildkite parallel agents and how to use them for CI parallelisation

GitLab CI parallelisation - how to run parallel jobs for Ruby & JavaScript projects

Buildkite parallelism integration

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

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