Buildless vs clcache

Buildless is a remote build cache service for teams that want build tools to reuse compiled output rather than repeat compilations. It supports Gradle, Maven, Turborepo, Bazel, CCache, and SCCache, with the maker describing its main integrations as drop-in and requiring no changes to code, the build process, or cloud setup. The docs also list REST/gRPC, Redis (RESP), and GitHub Actions. Its described infrastructure combines Cloudflare edge routing with a Redis-compatible backend through Dragonfly Cloud, plus tunable replication and durable in-memory storage. The Team plan adds premium caching with replication, edge serving, and persistence. Individual / OSS is free, with one project, one user, 3GB of cache, and 100GB transfer. Team is free during the public beta, with five projects, up to 50 users, 10GB cache, and 1TB transfer. Builds are not halted when storage or transfer is exceeded, but overages are charged. Business pricing is TBD and lists private cloud or on-prem options.

clcache is a free, open-source Python script for Windows builds using Microsoft Visual C++ cl.exe. It intercepts compiler calls and reuses cached object files to avoid recompiling matching work, while unsupported invocations can be passed to the real compiler. Cache keys use preprocessed source, a normalized command line, and the compiler binary’s size and modification time. Command-line controls provide statistics, cleanup, clearing, and maximum-size settings; the default limit is 1073741824 bytes (1 GiB). Object files can be compressed at levels 1 through 9, though changing compression settings requires clearing the cache. Hard-link mode requires cache and build directories on the same drive. Documentation covers Visual Studio and MSBuild integration, recommends disabling TrackFileAccess, and describes optional hash caching and memcached storage. The documented path requires /c, excludes /link and /Zi, and supports /Z7. INCLUDE and LIBPATH changes may not be detected.