Knapsack Pro

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

Gitlab CI

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

Netlify Build

https://www.netlify.com/products/build/
Unique feature

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

Deploy your sites to global Netlify infrastructure

Every commit gets its own deployed version. Automatically attach a new Deploy Preview at a unique permanent URL whenever you submit a Pull/Merge Request. Set Netlify Build to deploy every branch in the repository for unlimited staging environments.

Type of product

SaaS / On Premise

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

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

Yes

300 build minutes/month, 1 concurrent CI build

Predictable pricing

Yes

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

Yes

Extra 500 build minutes costs $7/month. User seat $15/user/month.

Support / SLA

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

Yes

99.99% uptime SLA for Starter and Pro plan. Business plan has negotiable SLA.

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

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

Yes

Starter plan (free) has only 1 concurrent build but Pro plan has 3 concurrent builds included.

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

Yes

High-Performance Builds - The premium build environment gives more concurrency, processing power and asynchronous deploys.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

Yes

When you trigger a build on Netlify, their buildbot starts a Docker container to build your website. The buildbot will look for instructions about required languages and software needed to run your command before running build command. The instructions are called dependencies, and how you declare them depends on the programming languages and tools used in build. Build image selection is available. Until recently, all Netlify sites were built using the same build image. Netlify is experimenting with allowing customers to select from multiple Docker images with different operating systems and software versions.

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

Simple dashboard to see CI builds. Other than CI analytics Netlify has Netlify Analytics that brings data captured directly from their servers for your website.

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

Yes

Yes

Team members managment. Role-based access control only in business plan.

Self-hosted option

Yes

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

Defined via YML config files

Yes, partially

Simple steps, define your own steps in bash commands

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

No

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

No

There are only small helpful things like incoming webhooks so other services can trigger Netlify deploys, and send outgoing webhooks as a deploy starts, succeeds, or fails.

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

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

Yes

It has support for Ruby.

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

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

Yes

It has support for JavaScript.

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

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

Yes

Netlify has incoming webhooks so other services can trigger Netlify deploys, and send outgoing webhooks as a deploy starts, succeeds, or fails. For instance you can integrate it with Slack.

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

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.

No

Auditing

Yes

N/A

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/

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

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

Start using Knapsack Pro with Gitlab CI or Netlify Build

Sign up and speed up your tests.

Get started free