Overview

CircleCI

Stacks13.0K

Followers7.1K

Votes974

Google Cloud Build

Stacks503

Followers207

Votes4

CircleCI vs Google Cloud Build: What are the differences?

Key differences between CircleCI and Google Cloud Build

CircleCI and Google Cloud Build are both popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms, but they have some key differences. In this article, we will explore these differences and understand which platform might be the right fit for your specific needs.

Pricing and Cost Structure: CircleCI offers a flexible pricing model that is based on the number of containers you run concurrently and the number of minutes you use. On the other hand, Google Cloud Build follows a different pricing structure that is based on the number of build minutes used per month. CircleCI's pricing model may be more suitable for smaller projects with low build requirements, whereas Google Cloud Build's pricing structure can be advantageous for larger teams or projects with higher build minutes.
Integration with Other Services: CircleCI integrates seamlessly with popular version control systems like GitHub and Bitbucket, providing easy setup and configuration options. It also offers a wide range of pre-configured orb integrations to extend functionality. On the other hand, Google Cloud Build is tightly integrated with other Google Cloud services, making it a preferred choice if you are using Google Cloud Platform extensively.
Scalability and Performance: CircleCI provides flexible scaling options, allowing you to easily increase or decrease resources based on your needs. It offers efficient containerization, allowing faster and more isolated builds. Google Cloud Build, being a part of the Google Cloud Platform, offers high scalability and performance by leveraging the power of Google's infrastructure and global network. If scalability and performance are critical factors for your CI/CD pipeline, Google Cloud Build might be a better choice.
Build Configuration and Customization: CircleCI offers a configuration file called .circleci/config.yml, which allows you to define your build pipeline and customize various stages. It provides a flexible and extensible configuration language. On the other hand, Google Cloud Build uses cloudbuild.yaml for defining build configurations. While it offers flexibility, the configuration options may be slightly different from CircleCI. If you have existing configurations or specific customization requirements, it is important to review and compare the documentation of both platforms.
Build Environment and Ecosystem: CircleCI provides a wide range of pre-installed software packages and caching options to speed up your builds. It supports multiple programming languages and frameworks out of the box. Google Cloud Build uses Docker containers to run your builds, allowing you to customize the build environment based on your specific requirements. It also integrates well with Google Container Registry. Depending on your project's specific needs and ecosystem, you can choose a platform that aligns better with your technology stack.

In summary, CircleCI and Google Cloud Build differ in their pricing models, integration options, scalability, build configuration languages, and build environments. Choosing the right platform depends on factors like budget, project size, required integrations, customization needs, and scalability requirements.

Advice on CircleCI, Google Cloud Build

Dustin

Senior Developer at Elegant Themes

Apr 18, 2019

Reviewon

CircleCI

We use CircleCI because of the better value it provides in its plans. I'm sure we could have used Travis just as easily but we found CircleCI's pricing to be more reasonable. In the two years since we signed up, the service has improved. CircleCI is always innovating and iterating on their platform. We have been very satisfied.

607k views607k

Comments

Somnath

Engineering Leader at Altimetrik Corp.

Jun 25, 2020

Needs adviceon

CircleCI

Drone.io

GitHub Actions

I am in the process of evaluating CircleCI, Drone.io, and Github Actions to cover my #CI/ CD needs. I would appreciate your advice on comparative study w.r.t. attributes like language-Inclusive support, code-base integration, performance, cost, maintenance, support, ease of use, ability to deal with big projects, etc. based on actual industry experience.

Thanks in advance!

1.82M views1.82M

Comments

Felipe

May 24, 2020

Needs advice

My website is brand new and one of the few requirements of testings I had to implement was code coverage. Never though it was so hard to implement using a #docker container. Given my lack of experience, every attempt I tried on making a simple code coverage test using the 4 combinations of #TravisCI, #CircleCi with #Coveralls, #Codecov I failed. The main problem was I was generating the .coverage file within the docker container and couldn't access it with #TravisCi or #CircleCi, every attempt to solve this problem seems to be very hacky and this was not the kind of complexity I want to introduce to my newborn website. This problem was solved using a specific action for #GitHubActions, it was a 3 line solution I had to put in my github workflow file and I was able to access the .coverage file from my docker container and get the coverage report with #Codecov.

198k views198k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

CircleCI	Google Cloud Build
Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.	Cloud Build lets you build software quickly across all languages. Get complete control over defining custom workflows for building, testing, and deploying across multiple environments such as VMs, serverless, Kubernetes, or Firebase.
Language-Inclusive Support;Custom Environments;Flexible Resource Allocation;SSH Or Local Builds For Easy Debugging;Improved Caching;Unmatched Security;Parallelism;Insights	Commit to deploy in minutes; Choose what to build; Extremely fast builds; Automate your deployments; Define your custom workflow; Unparalleled privacy; Native Docker support; Generous free tier; Powerful insights; Identify vulnerabilities; Build locally or in the cloud
Statistics
Stacks 13.0K	Stacks 503
Followers 7.1K	Followers 207
Votes 974	Votes 4
Pros & Cons
Pros 226 Github integration 177 Easy setup 153 Fast builds 94 Competitively priced 74 Slack integration Cons 12 Unstable 6 Scammy pricing structure 0 Aggressive Github permissions	Pros 2 GCP easy integration 2 Container based Cons 2 Vendor lock-in
Integrations
dotCloud GitHub Xcode Azure Container Service Slack Heroku JavaScript Node.js Python Amazon EC2	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to CircleCI, Google Cloud Build?

Jenkins

In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

Buddy

Git platform for web and software developers with Docker-based tools for Continuous Integration and Deployment.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Buildkite

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.