Rancher Pipelines vs TeamCity comparison of Continuous Integration servers

	Rancher Pipelines https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/pipelines/	TeamCity https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/
Unique feature	DevOps tool for container orchestration	Technology awareness
Type of product	On Premise	On Premise
Offers a free plan	Yes Free, open source project	Yes They offer a great free professional plan, limited to 100 build configurations and 3 build agents. From there, you pay for each aditional agent you want (discounts if you purchase more than 1 agent at a time). They also provide a free plan for open source, non commercial projects, and steep 50% discounts for startups.
Predictable pricing	Yes It's free!	Yes They have a clear list of prices per number of agents.
Support / SLA	Yes Paid support available: https://rancher.com/pricing/	Yes
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 You can run multiple parallel steps within a build stage	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 Unclear from the documentation (probably not)	N/A No specific mention that we could find, but judging by the wording used it would appear that tasks can be divided accross different machines.
Containers support / Build environment	Yes	Yes First class Docker support, among others
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 Not particularly clear, but it appears you can monitor stats in a Grafana dashboard: https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/monitoring/	Yes Great system overview, even allows building your own dashboards in order to see everything you're interested in at a glance.
Management support How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on	Yes User management is available, with specific roles assigned, or permissions to certain resources and projects	Yes Allows assigning roles, LDAP and Windows domain integrations and more.
Self-hosted option	Yes	Yes
Hosted plans / SaaS	No	No
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 Pipelines as code (YML files), but also manageable via the UI	Yes Unlike most options in the CI/CD space, TeamCity allows defining pipelines using a Kotlin-based DSL. This unlocks a lot of potential, such as templates for common CI/CD tasks, and deep integration with various IDEs (not just JetBrains IDEs)
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	Yes Something that stands out from the rest, allows integrating third party reports, as long as they produce HTML output.
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?	N/A	Yes JetBrains has a rich ecosystem of plugins in general.
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.	N/A Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned.	Yes Using what they call 'Technology Awareness', promises great intehration with Ruby projects, with features such as testing framework support, static analysis and code coverage available out of the box, with no additional work required: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/features/technology_awareness.html
Specific language support: JavaScript	N/A Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned.	No (partial) Unlike Ruby, there's no first class support for Javascript, although they do advertise the fact that their large collections of plugins can cover any use case for Javascript projects: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/teamcity
Integrations 1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)	Yes Integrations available for GitLab, GitHub and Bitbucket	Yes Great cloud integrations (Google Cloud, AWS, VMWare, etc) as well as 'key' integrations (VSCode, Jira, even NuGet)
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 REST API available. It provides introspection and documentation: https://github.com/rancher/api-spec/blob/master/specification.md#filtering. It should offer enough access to allow building whatever customizations or integrations with 3rd party tools deemed necessary.	Yes Unlike most tools, which offer just a Rest API, TeamCity provides ample opportunity for extension via plugins, their own API, and service messages (formatted messages on stdout)
Auditing	Yes Allows logging to various systems (Kafka, Elastic, etc) which should make audit possible	Yes
Additional notes	Rancher is a full software stack for container orchestration, going as far as building their own Linux distribution (RancherOS). Using Rancher seems more like a decision to be made considering all other features Rancher offers, not just the CI server. Also worth noting that Rancher uses Jenkins under the hood, but the engine is locked so projects can't just be migrated between the two.	Great ecosystem, with a strong focus on integration with other tools (not only JetBrains).

Rancher Pipelines

https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/pipelines/

TeamCity

https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/

Unique feature

DevOps tool for container orchestration

Technology awareness

Type of product

On Premise

Offers a free plan

Yes

Free, open source project

Yes

They offer a great free professional plan, limited to 100 build configurations and 3 build agents. From there, you pay for each aditional agent you want (discounts if you purchase more than 1 agent at a time). They also provide a free plan for open source, non commercial projects, and steep 50% discounts for startups.

Predictable pricing

Yes

It's free!

Yes

They have a clear list of prices per number of agents.

Support / SLA

Yes

Paid support available: https://rancher.com/pricing/

Yes

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

You can run multiple parallel steps within a build stage

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

Unclear from the documentation (probably not)

N/A

No specific mention that we could find, but judging by the wording used it would appear that tasks can be divided accross different machines.

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

First class Docker support, among others

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

Not particularly clear, but it appears you can monitor stats in a Grafana dashboard: https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/monitoring/

Yes

Great system overview, even allows building your own dashboards in order to see everything you're interested in at a glance.

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

Yes

User management is available, with specific roles assigned, or permissions to certain resources and projects

Yes

Allows assigning roles, LDAP and Windows domain integrations and more.

Self-hosted option

Yes

Hosted plans / SaaS

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

Pipelines as code (YML files), but also manageable via the UI

Yes

Unlike most options in the CI/CD space, TeamCity allows defining pipelines using a Kotlin-based DSL. This unlocks a lot of potential, such as templates for common CI/CD tasks, and deep integration with various IDEs (not just JetBrains IDEs)

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

Something that stands out from the rest, allows integrating third party reports, as long as they produce HTML output.

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?

N/A

Yes

JetBrains has a rich ecosystem of plugins in general.

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.

N/A

Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned.

Yes

Using what they call 'Technology Awareness', promises great intehration with Ruby projects, with features such as testing framework support, static analysis and code coverage available out of the box, with no additional work required: https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/features/technology_awareness.html

Specific language support: JavaScript

N/A

Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned.

No (partial)

Unlike Ruby, there's no first class support for Javascript, although they do advertise the fact that their large collections of plugins can cover any use case for Javascript projects: https://plugins.jetbrains.com/teamcity

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

Yes

Integrations available for GitLab, GitHub and Bitbucket

Yes

Great cloud integrations (Google Cloud, AWS, VMWare, etc) as well as 'key' integrations (VSCode, Jira, even NuGet)

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

REST API available. It provides introspection and documentation: https://github.com/rancher/api-spec/blob/master/specification.md#filtering. It should offer enough access to allow building whatever customizations or integrations with 3rd party tools deemed necessary.

Yes

Unlike most tools, which offer just a Rest API, TeamCity provides ample opportunity for extension via plugins, their own API, and service messages (formatted messages on stdout)

Auditing

Yes

Allows logging to various systems (Kafka, Elastic, etc) which should make audit possible

Yes

Additional notes

Rancher is a full software stack for container orchestration, going as far as building their own Linux distribution (RancherOS). Using Rancher seems more like a decision to be made considering all other features Rancher offers, not just the CI server. Also worth noting that Rancher uses Jenkins under the hood, but the engine is locked so projects can't just be migrated between the two.

Great ecosystem, with a strong focus on integration with other tools (not only JetBrains).

Rancher Pipelines vs TeamCity comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Rancher Pipelines and TeamCity?