Netlify Build vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers

	Netlify Build https://www.netlify.com/products/build/	Github Actions https://github.com/features/actions
Unique feature	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.	Best GitHub integration possible
Type of product	SaaS	SaaS / On Premise
Offers a free plan	Yes 300 build minutes/month, 1 concurrent CI build	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 Extra 500 build minutes costs $7/month. User seat $15/user/month.	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	Yes 99.99% uptime SLA for Starter and Pro plan. Business plan has negotiable 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.
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 Starter plan (free) has only 1 concurrent build but Pro plan has 3 concurrent builds included.	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 High-Performance Builds - The premium build environment gives more concurrency, processing power and asynchronous deploys.	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 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.	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 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.	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 Team members managment. Role-based access control only in business plan.	N/A Unclear from the available documentation
Self-hosted option	No	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, partially Simple steps, define your own steps in bash commands	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.	No	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?	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.	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.	Yes It has support for Ruby.	Yes Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage
Specific language support: JavaScript	Yes It has support for JavaScript.	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 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.	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	No	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	N/A	N/A
Additional notes

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	-

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

Netlify Build

Github Actions

Deploy your sites to global Netlify infrastructure

Best GitHub integration possible

SaaS

SaaS / On Premise

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes (partial)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes, partially

Yes

No

N/A

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

N/A

N/A

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

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

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