Knapsack Pro

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

Semaphore CI

https://semaphoreci.com

Scrutinizer CI

https://scrutinizer-ci.com
Unique feature

Autoscaling made easy / Great CLI

Ongoing statical analysis

Type of product

SaaS

SaaS

Offers a free plan

Yes

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

Yes

Free for open source projects

Predictable pricing

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.

Yes

Three different paid monthly tiers

Support / SLA

N/A

Not clear if they offer any real SLA on support.

N/A

Not specifically mentioned, probably not.

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

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

Yes

Automated parallalelization for code analysis, as well as support for running tasks in parallel

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

N/A

Unclear from the documentation (probably not)

Containers support / Build environment

Yes

Allows running builds inside docker containers

Yes

Tests run in isolated containers. Docker support available.

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

Besides classic CI overview, they also provide static code analysis insights, which is a differentiator for Scrutinizer

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

Yes

Yes

Additional seats available for every plan at $14.90 per seat, per month.

Self-hosted option

No

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

Allows defining complex build workflows with ease

Yes

Pipelines as code (YML files)

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

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?

N/A

No

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

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

Yes

Code analysis (automated code reviews) are available for Ruby, as well as specific documentation for setting up a Ruby project: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/guides/ruby. Frameworks like Ruby on Rails are supported. They also provide tools like bundler-audit, for identifying vulnerable gems: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/tools/ruby/bundler-audit/

Specific language support: JavaScript

Yes

Provides rich documentation on integrating Semaphore CI in Javascript projects

Yes

Automated code reviews are available for Javascript as well as specific documentation for setting up a Node.js project: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/guides/javascript. Typescript is also supported.

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

Yes

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

Yes

Light integration with third party systems, mainly code management frameworks like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab.

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

Yes

Comprehensive REST API available: https://scrutinizer-ci.com/docs/api/

Auditing

Yes

N/A

Unclear from the documentation, but most likely available.

Additional notes

List of features is based on Semaphore 2.0

The code analysis features seem great, the offer for similar tools is quite light. Seems similar to lgtm.com

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

Semaphore CI parallelism integration

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