Knapsack Pro

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

Buildkite

https://buildkite.com

Scrutinizer CI

https://scrutinizer-ci.com
Unique feature

Runs on own infrastructure, API

Ongoing statical analysis

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free for open source projects and selected organizations

Yes

Free for open source projects

Predictable pricing

Yes

Clearly defined monthly and annual plans

Yes

Three different paid monthly tiers

Support / SLA

Yes

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

N/A

Not specifically mentioned, probably not.

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

Automated parallalelization for code analysis, as well as support for running tasks in parallel

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

N/A

Unclear from the documentation (probably not)

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

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

Yes

Tests run in isolated containers. Docker support available.

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

Besides classic CI overview, they also provide static code analysis insights, which is a differentiator for Scrutinizer

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

Yes

Yes

Additional seats available for every plan at $14.90 per seat, per month.

Self-hosted option

No

No

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

Pipelines as code (YML 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

No

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

Code analysis (automated code reviews) are available for Ruby, as well as specific documentation for setting up a Ruby project: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/guides/ruby. Frameworks like Ruby on Rails are supported. They also provide tools like bundler-audit, for identifying vulnerable gems: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/tools/ruby/bundler-audit/

Specific language support: JavaScript

No

Yes

Automated code reviews are available for Javascript as well as specific documentation for setting up a Node.js project: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/guides/javascript. Typescript is also supported.

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

Light integration with third party systems, mainly code management frameworks like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab.

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

Comprehensive REST API available: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/api/

Auditing

Yes

N/A

Unclear from the documentation, but most likely available.

Additional notes

The code analysis features seem great, the offer for similar tools is quite light. Seems similar to lgtm.com

Buildkite parallel agents and how to use them for CI parallelisation

Buildkite parallelism integration

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