Bazel vs Ninja
Bazel
bazel.buildNinja
ninja-build.orgSide by side
| Figure | Bazel | Ninja |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Build Automation Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.1 (#13) |
| Incremental builds | Bazel caches previous work and rebuilds only what needs to change. | Ninja aims for very fast incremental builds, including for very large projects. |
| Purpose | Bazel is an open-source tool that automates software builds and tests. | Ninja is a small build system designed to evaluate incremental builds quickly. |
| Support | The project directs users to its discussion group, GitHub issue tracker, Slack, and Stack Overflow. | The project site links to a mailing list and lists the #ninja-build IRC channel on irc.oftc.net. |
Plans
In their own words
Bazel
Bazel is a free, open-source tool for automating software builds and tests across languages and platforms. Projects define targets in BUILD files using Starlark, which can also be used to create custom rules and macros. Bazel caches prior work and rebuilds what needs to change, while running tasks in parallel. It supports languages including C++, Java, Kotlin, Python, Go, and Rust, with outputs for desktop, server, Android, and iOS. Bazel runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and the documentation describes builds with 100,000 or more source files across multiple repositories. Sandboxing can make builds and tests more hermetic, and failures return a non-zero exit code for basic CI integration. Teams can share outputs through a remote cache, but must select and maintain its backend and secure access because it can contain binaries. IDE options include plugins for IntelliJ, Android Studio, CLion, and Visual Studio Code, plus Xcode integration. Bazel is not well suited to uncached deployment steps that change cloud configuration.