Buildkite vs Drone
Buildkite
buildkite.com
Drone
drone.ioSide by side
| Figure | Buildkite | Drone |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $30/mo | $299/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 2 |
| Spec score · Continuous Integration Software | 8.6 (#9) | 8.3 (#17) |
| Spec score · Game Build Automation Software | 8.5 (#13) | 8.2 (#18) |
| Spec score · Ci Cd Platforms | 8.5 (#9) | 8.2 (#12) |
| Purpose | Buildkite Pipelines is a platform for building CI/CD workflows, with pipeline steps dispatched as jobs to agents. | Drone is a self-service continuous integration platform for automating software builds and testing. |
| Security | Buildkite states that data in transit is protected with TLS 1.2+ and data at rest is encrypted using AES-256. | Drone supports AES-GCM encryption for secrets stored in its database, but encryption must be enabled before secrets are stored. |
| Support | The Free Plan includes community support, Pro includes priority email support, and Enterprise includes support with SLA credits and Slack Connect. | Drone documentation directs users to its community forum and chatroom for questions and comments. |
Plans
In their own words
Buildkite
Buildkite Pipelines is a CI/CD platform that dispatches pipeline steps as jobs to agents. Agents can be hosted by Buildkite or run in a customer's own infrastructure, including on-premises and cloud environments. Dynamic pipelines can generate and upload steps during a build, allowing a workflow to respond to code changes, test results or runtime logic. Test Engine collects results across testing frameworks and provides tools to track, analyze and act on them. It can detect and quarantine flaky tests, split tests across parallel jobs, and monitor test performance, reliability and ownership. Documented integrations include Slack, PagerDuty, Datadog, Honeycomb, OpenTelemetry, Amazon EventBridge, Artifactory, Docker Hub and Backstage. Buildkite lists TLS 1.2+ for data in transit and AES-256 encryption at rest, along with an annually audited SOC 2 Type II report. The Free Plan costs nothing and allows up to 5 users and 10 concurrent jobs. Pro costs $30 a month, billed per active user monthly, and includes up to 50 users and up to 250 concurrent agents, with 10 included.