Knapsack Pro

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

Github Actions

https://github.com/features/actions

Bitbucket Pipelines

https://bitbucket.org/product/features/pipelines
Unique feature

Best GitHub integration possible

Best Jira integration possible

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

SaaS / On Premise

Offers a free plan

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.

Yes

Offers a very modest free cloud plan, limited to 5 users, 50 minutes of build time per month and 1GB storage. There's no free self-hosted version, but they do offer a $10 one-time payment plan for 10 users (build time and storage is only limited by your infrastructure)

Predictable pricing

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)

Yes

Pricing is based on amount of users for both the cloud and on premise versions. The cloud offering has different tiers depending on build times and storage.

Support / SLA

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.

Yes

Dedicated tehnical 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

Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform.

Yes

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

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.

N/A

Documentation is unclear, but it's reasonable to assume that distributed builds for the on premise version are not an issue.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM.

Yes

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

Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes.

Yes

Excellent overview and contextual feedback.

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

N/A

Unclear from the available documentation

Yes

Self-hosted option

Yes

Coming soon, not available yet.

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

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)

Yes

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

Unclear from the available documentation

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

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

Yes

Large collection of available apps: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/apps-and-integrations-675189068.html

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

Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage

Yes

Clear, concise documentation on setting up a Ruby project with Bitbucket pipelines: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/ruby-with-bitbucket-pipelines-872005618.html

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage

Yes

Clear, concise documentation on setting up a Javascript project with Bitbucket pipelines: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/javascript-node-js-with-bitbucket-pipelines-873891287.html

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

Yes

Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more)

Yes

Large collection of available integrations: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/apps-and-integrations-675189068.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

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)

Yes

Auditing

N/A

Yes

Additional notes

There's some confusion regarding Bitbucket Pipelines and Bamboo, where they overlap and where not. Atlassian discontinued their Bamboo Cloud offering ~3 years ago, so at a high-level they are different products in that regard. What can be said about both is that they are top-tier tools for high-demand engineering teams, especially valuable as long as the other tools in the Atlassian suite are adopted (Bitbucket is a must for Bitbucket pipelines, being just one if it's features, but other tools like Jira are not to be dismissed either). It does seem like Bitbucket Pipelines is the more mature product of the two though.

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

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