Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GitHub Actions VS Azure Pipelines

Compare GitHub Actions VS Azure Pipelines and see what are their differences

GitHub Actions logo GitHub Actions

Automate your workflow from idea to production

Azure Pipelines logo Azure Pipelines

Get 10 free parallel jobs for cloud-based CI/CD pipelines for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Automate builds and easily deploy to any cloud with Azure Pipelines.
  • GitHub Actions Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-25
  • Azure Pipelines Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-29

GitHub Actions features and specs

  • Seamless GitHub Integration
    GitHub Actions are natively integrated with GitHub, making it easy to use within repositories and leverage other GitHub features such as issues, pull requests, and releases.
  • Custom Workflows
    Allows for the creation of complex and custom workflows using YAML syntax, providing flexibility to handle a variety of CI/CD processes.
  • Marketplace Access
    Access to GitHub Marketplace where a wide range of pre-built actions are available, allowing users to quickly set up workflows with minimal configuration.
  • Concurrent Execution
    Supports parallel execution of jobs, which can significantly reduce the time needed to run workflows by performing multiple tasks simultaneously.
  • Self-Hosted Runners
    Provides the ability to use self-hosted runners, offering more control over the environment and resources used for running workflows.
  • Cost-Efficient
    Includes a generous free tier, especially for public repositories, which can be cost-effective for projects with limited resource requirements.

Possible disadvantages of GitHub Actions

  • Complexity for Beginners
    Due to its powerful features and flexibility, setting up and managing GitHub Actions can be complex for users who are not familiar with CI/CD processes or YAML.
  • Limited to GitHub
    As a GitHub-specific product, GitHub Actions is tied to repositories hosted on GitHub, limiting its use for projects that are hosted on other version control platforms.
  • Billing for Additional Usage
    While there is a free tier, usage beyond the free limits incurs additional charges, which can become significant for high-frequency or resource-intensive workflows.
  • Resource Limitations
    GitHub Actions has limitations on available resources (such as CPU and memory) for runners, which can be restrictive for very resource-intensive tasks.

Azure Pipelines features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

GitHub Actions videos

Introducing GitHub Package Registry

More videos:

  • Tutorial - 5 Ways to DevOps-ify your App - Github Actions Tutorial
  • Review - Automatic Deployment With Github Actions
  • Review - GitHub Actions - Now with built-in CI/CD! Live from GitHub HQ

Azure Pipelines videos

Azure Pipelines: Classic vs Yaml - Build and Release comparison

More videos:

  • Review - Building and Deploying your Code with Azure Pipelines
  • Review - Azure Pipelines - Build

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines)
DevOps Tools
94 94%
6% 6
Continuous Integration
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Code Collaboration
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines

GitHub Actions Reviews

Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
GitHub Actions is the CI/CD solution that’s built into GitHub, the most popular version control platform. It’s specifically designed to provide an intuitive experience for developers who want to run pipelines quickly without having to configure any separate software. Because it’s a managed SaaS service that’s specifically focused on CI/CD, there are no self-hosting...
Source: spacelift.io

Azure Pipelines Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
Azure Pipelines, a CI/CD solution from Microsoft, is one component in the overall Azure DevOps group. It has good compatibility with various other Azure services, but can also be used for projects that are not connected to Azure. The system provides many functionalities such as handling different programming languages, executing jobs in parallel and using complex deployment...
Source: morninglif.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GitHub Actions seems to be a lot more popular than Azure Pipelines. While we know about 306 links to GitHub Actions, we've tracked only 5 mentions of Azure Pipelines. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GitHub Actions mentions (306)

  • Getting started with FrankenPHP, Laravel and Docker
    My base target is used for development use, but my production target is used for production use. I'm using a GitHub Actions workflow to checkout my code, installing dependencies without development dependencies, and building my application. When that's done, I build the Docker image and send it to my container registry. - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • Automating Voicebot Deployments for Amazon Connect
    In this post, I will share WebRTC.ventures' best practices in automating the deployment of AI-powered voice assistants for Amazon Connect, moving beyond manual, click-by-click setups to a robust, scalable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach. We’ll explore how to manage both static and dynamic resources, leverage tools like Terraform and AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), and even set up an automated... - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Deploying a static Website with Pulumi
    The Python Pulumi code is deployed with GitHub Actions. This leverages static credentials for AWS embedded as repository secrets. I have implemented two workflows:. - Source: dev.to / 30 days ago
  • As Visual Studio App Center closes, a look back, and what to use now?
    When Microsoft announced the App Center shutdown last year, they recommended an array of alternative tools from elsewhere in their developer toolkit and beyond to replace its capabilities. Users seeking an alternative to App Center's hosted build automation, or App Store deployment, capabilities can look to Azure DevOps Pipelines or GitHub Actions. For cloud-based on-device testing, they recommend external tool... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • The Tech Stack of a Cloud Computing Startup
    We manage infrastructure with Terraform and lean heavily on GitHub Actions for CI/CD. Very simple but it works! Oh and a lot of bash scripts of course. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

Azure Pipelines mentions (5)

  • As Visual Studio App Center closes, a look back, and what to use now?
    When Microsoft announced the App Center shutdown last year, they recommended an array of alternative tools from elsewhere in their developer toolkit and beyond to replace its capabilities. Users seeking an alternative to App Center's hosted build automation, or App Store deployment, capabilities can look to Azure DevOps Pipelines or GitHub Actions. For cloud-based on-device testing, they recommend external tool... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Ask HN: How do I automate deployment and setup to Azure?
    The details depend on what the unit of deployment is: VMs? Containers? Something else? Depending on the unit of deployment you can run VMs, a managed kubernetes cluster or the much cheaper Azure container apps combined with PaaS offerings like managed Databases, Firewalls, API gateways, monitoring etc. You could start with Azure DevOps pipelines [1], but billing is opaque which doesn't help when tracking down... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Managing the infrastructure of a reusable ecommerce platform with Terraform
    We use GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps for our Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery system. When the changes on the Terraform infrastructure repository are added to the main branch, the CICD system gets triggered and the plan is executed on our development environments. When the logs from the plan are the expected ones we manually run the apply. - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago
  • Deploy a Website using ASP.NET Core Web App (MVC)
    Have a look at azure pipelines. Pretty easy to set up so you can push code from VS to github or an azure repo and the pipeline will handle deployment to an azure app service. The MS docs are very detailed and pretty much walk you through it all. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/pipelines/. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Why CI/CD is important?
    Also I selected some pages you can read more about like Amazon, Google or Microsoft among other definitions. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GitHub Actions and Azure Pipelines, you can also consider the following products

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.

GitLab CI - GitLab has integrated CI to test, build and deploy your code

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

Wildfire - With Wildfire, companies & agencies can easily build & launch social media marketing campaigns within minutes. Campaign formats include quizzes, contests, coupons, virtual gifts and more.

Harness - Automated Tests For Your Web App