Drone vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers

	Drone https://drone.io	Github Actions https://github.com/features/actions
Unique feature	Customization	Best GitHub integration possible
Type of product	SaaS / On Premise	SaaS / On Premise
Offers a free plan	Yes The cloud version is free for open source projects. Also offers a free plan for any project, with a limit of 5000 builds per year. The on-premise version is available as a Docker image.	Yes The on premise plan (not yet available) will be free, 2000 build minutes included in the free cloud plan. Completely free plan for open source projects.
Predictable pricing	Yes Predictable pricing based on number of users and repositories. They have a calculator to help determine cost.	Yes (partial) While it's clear what the cost is (priced per build-minute), figuring out costs can be a hassle, especially as the price can vary quite a bit depending on commits to the project. One advantage for GitHub Actions is that the tiers define a maximum amount of minutes, so it's easier to predict the final cost. You can also purchase aditional runners with pricing dependent on the platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows)
Support / SLA	N/A It's not clear what their support commitment is. They have a fairly active community on Discourse, for community support.	Yes Community support available for any tier, unclear at what point and if dedicated support is available. Safe to assume that eneterprise clients can access technical 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 Pipeline task configuration allows running tasks in parallel	Yes Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform.
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 Pipelines can be configured to run on multiple machines, although they recommend that to be an option only if paralellizing tasks and scaling vertically doesn't suffice. They even support multi-platform distribution (ie: running tasks on various operating systems)	N/A No specific mention, but given the fact that tasks can be run on multiple platforms, it's likely that distributed builds are also available.
Containers support / Build environment	Yes By default, they offer Docker support for the CI/CD job runners.	Yes Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM.
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	Yes Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes.
Management support How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on	Yes They offer in-depth documentation for user and server management. A lot of it can be done via the drone CLI tool, which seems to be the focal point of the docs.	N/A Unclear from the available documentation
Self-hosted option	Yes	Yes Coming soon, not available yet.
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 Easily configurable pipelines via YML files.	Yes Called GitHub Action Workflows, they are defined in separate Docker containers, using the YAML syntax (they used to support HCL, but they're migrating away from that)
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.	N/A	N/A Unclear from the available documentation
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 Drone CI allows integrating plugins into the CI/CD process. They have a list of available community plugins and provide documentation on building your own. Plugins are Docker containers which plug directly into the CI/CD process.	Yes Thanks to the large following, GitHub Actions already enjoys a wide varierty of available pre-made workflows, which you can browse right on the homepage: https://github.com/features/actions
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.	No (partial) No specific support, but they do provide sufficient documentation on getting a Ruby project up and running, including a multi-platform example.	Yes Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage
Specific language support: JavaScript	No (partial) No specific 1st party support, but the plugin marketplace features an NPM authoring and an NPM authentication plugin.	Yes Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage
Integrations 1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)	Yes Integrates well with source code management platforms (1st party support for GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket) as well as other systems via 3rd party plugins.	Yes Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more)
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 Drone provides a feature-rich REST API, as well as an official Go SDK for it.	N/A Unclear at the moment, but assume GitHub Actions will be integrated with the GitHub GraphQL API (one of the more mature GraphQL API implementations available)
Auditing	Yes	N/A
Additional notes	The fact that Drone works with any source code manager, as well as the fact that it can run tasks on multiple platforms makes it stand out from the rest. Very nifty!

Programming Language	Supported test runners	Installation guide	Knapsack Pro Library README / Source
Ruby	RSpec, Cucumber, Minitest, test-unit, Spinach, Turnip	Install	knapsack_pro gem
JavaScript	Cypress.io	Install	@knapsack-pro/cypress
JavaScript	Jest	Install	@knapsack-pro/jest
JavaScript / TypeScript	Any test runner in JavaScript	How to build native integration with Knapsack Pro API to run tests in parallel for any test runner	@knapsack-pro/core
Any programming language	Any test runner	How to build a custom Knapsack Pro API client from scratch in any programming language	-

Drone vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers What are the differences between Drone and Github Actions?

Drone

Github Actions

Customization

Best GitHub integration possible

SaaS / On Premise

SaaS / On Premise

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes (partial)

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

N/A

Yes

Yes

No (partial)

Yes

No (partial)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Yes

N/A

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GitHub Actions testing Ruby on Rails with RSpec and parallel jobs (matrix feature)

How to run Jest tests on GitHub Actions - JS parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

GitHub Actions Cypress.io E2E testing parallel jobs with matrix feature (NodeJS YAML config)

Github Actions parallelism integration

Introduction to CI parallelisation with Knapsack Pro

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Drone vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Drone and Github Actions?

How to run parallel tests on Drone and Github Actions
to execute 1-hour test suite in 2 minutes?

How much can you save with faster tests
on Drone and Github Actions?