Knapsack Pro

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

Gitlab CI

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

Semaphore CI

https://semaphoreci.com
Unique feature

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

Autoscaling made easy / Great CLI

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

1,300 service minutes every month. Plans to release a free tier for open source projects.

Predictable pricing

Yes

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

Yes

Semaphore doesn't have traditional pricing tiers, instead it lists the types of machines you can use and their pricing per second of service. They plan to release an annual plan at some point.

Support / SLA

Yes

All paid plans include next business day support.

N/A

Not clear if they offer any real SLA on 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

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

Yes

Allows defining a custom build matrix such that your build can be parallelized accross several different environments.

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

N/A

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default

Yes

Allows running builds inside docker containers

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

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

Yes

Yes

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

Allows defining complex build workflows with ease

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

N/A

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

N/A

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

Provides rich documentation on integrating Semaphore CI in Ruby projects. Also provides sudo access if you need to install system dependencies or C extensions.

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

Provides rich documentation on integrating Semaphore CI in Javascript projects

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

Integration with GitHub and Slack. They allow building iOS projects via their macOS Mojave VM image.

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

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/

List of features is based on Semaphore 2.0

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

Running Rails tests in parallel on Semaphore CI 2.0 with dynamic test files split

Gitlab CI parallelism integration

Semaphore CI parallelism integration

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