When comparing Semaphore CI vs Buildkite, the Slant community recommends Semaphore CI for most people. In the question“What are the best continuous integration tools?” Semaphore CI is ranked 10th while Buildkite is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Semaphore CI is:
Whenever a new push is made on GitHub or Bitbucket, Semaphore automatically runs tests on that branch.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Automatic Testing
Whenever a new push is made on GitHub or Bitbucket, Semaphore automatically runs tests on that branch.
Pro Free for open source
Semaphore supports open source and offers unlimited open source projects.
Pro Complete customer support
Semaphore offers all-around customer support for its commercial users.
Pro Free 100 builds per month for private projects
Semaphore offers 100 builds every month for private projects. This package is free for an unlimited time and offers: free & unlimited deploys, unlimited collaborators and running tests in parallel.
Pro GitHub integration
Projects can be imported from GitHub and Semaphore will automatically connect with that repository, once that's done, it will automatically trigger for every code commit.
Pro Docker support
Out of the box Docker support. Additionally, Semaphore can cache Docker images by using included docker-cache commands.
Pro Easy to configure
Semaphore is quite easy to configure and work with. It easily integrates with GitHub and a first build is only a few clicks away.
Semaphore is configured using .yaml configuration files which can be added from the web UI. There are a lot of tutorials out there that help developers configure Semaphore to their preference.
Pro Very easy to set up
The web UI allows writing a build script inline, running a script from your repository, or creating a whole pipeline. Docker support is built-in.
Pro Allows parallel jobs
Buildkite allows you to configure your build in order to run parallel jobs and obtain considerably faster results.
Pro Scheduled builds
Run builds on a cron-like schedule to rebuild a master branch or run an import process.
Pro Run your own build servers
Run an agent on your own servers (AWS, etc) so that you have control over what your builds can access.
Pro Intergrates with VCS
Integrates with GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket, Bitbucket Server, GitLab, Codebase, or any custom Git repository.
Pro Affordable
One plan that gives you everything at a reasonable price.
Pro Plugin support for docker and docker-compose
Pro Concurrency control
Make sure only one deploy build runs at a time with concurrency control.
Pro Config driven build process
While you can define your build process in the dashboard, you can also run it from config files in the repository.
Pro Responsive support
Support respond quickly and listen to feedback.
Cons
Con Proprietary with private project for $30/month
Semaphore is not free and nor is it open source. Pricing starts at $29 per month. However, there is a free option for private projects which have less than 100 builds per month and it's free for open source projects.