Semaphore is 30% faster and 30% cheaper than Github Actions

GitHub Actions vs. Semaphore: key differences

GitHub Actions pain πŸ˜–Semaphore gain πŸš€
πŸ› οΈ Hidden complexity in workflowsβœ… Fast, optimized pipelines
⏳ Slow builds and job limits⚑ Smart parallelism and flexible infrastructure
πŸ’₯ Performance bottlenecks under loadπŸ“ CI/CD as code with real-time debugging
πŸ” Limited observability and debuggingπŸ—οΈ Auto-scaling, hybrid cloud or self-hosted
❌ Hard to scale across teams🀝 Human support that helps you improve

From GitHub Actions to Semaphore: high performance, hands-on support, better pricing

GitHub Actions couldn’t keep up with our growing needs. Semaphore delivered faster builds, powerful parallelism, and hands-on support that helped us scale with confidence.

🚨 Before
⏳ Slow builds
πŸ” Performance issues
πŸ’Έ Cost inefficiencies
πŸ› οΈ Workflow friction

βœ… After
⚑ 8-minute test suites
πŸš€ Massive parallelization
πŸ’° Cost-optimized pipelines
🀝 Proactive support

βœ… fast builds 8-minute test suites 
βœ… reduced costs

Engineering Leader for Infrastructure, Developer Experience, and Platform Services at BetterUp

Why teams choose Semaphore over GitHub Actions

Built for performance at any scale ⚑

GitHub Actions may work for simple tasksβ€”but once you need performance, scale, and real support, Semaphore takes over.

  • βœ”οΈ No limits on parallelism or job queues

  • βœ”οΈ Scale pipelines without rewriting workflows

  • βœ”οΈ Proactive support from CI/CD experts

πŸ“Œ Spend less time fighting CI, more time shipping code.

β€œSince moving to Semaphore from GitHub Actions, our CI pipeline has been stable and had more consistent run times, this allowed us to detect failures and flaky specs faster.”

Senior Software Engineer

Faster builds, better dev experience πŸš€

Semaphore is optimized for speed and clarity. Teams switching from GitHub Actions ship faster and spend less time debugging builds.

  • βœ”οΈ Optimized parallel test execution

  • βœ”οΈ Workflow visibility and real-time debugging

  • βœ”οΈ Predictable performance under load

πŸ“Œ Keep your developers focused on product, not CI problems.

“It’s cheap, it’s easy to understand, and the support team is quick to assist if you need help. Honestly, after trying GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Octopus, Jenkins, and more, this clearly stands out to me as the better option.”

Head of DevOps at Kvist

One setup, multiple environments, total control 🌍

Avoid inconsistent setups across projects. Semaphore brings structure, flexibility, and control to teams working across any environment.

  • βœ”οΈ CI/CD as versioned code

  • βœ”οΈ Runs across cloud, hybrid, and self-hosted

  • βœ”οΈ Fine-grained permission control

πŸ“Œ Consistent, scalable CI/CD for any team size.

“Semaphore is an incredibly easy-to-use CI/CD platform. Integrating my Ruby on Rails applications to use it is always very easy to do. Their platform has an incredibly good-looking UI, and documentation is also very well written.”

Backend Engineer at Vox Group

πŸ” Compare Semaphore πŸ†š GitHub Actions

  • Product type
  • SaaS
  • Hybrid: run agents on customer-managed infrastructure
  • Fully on-premises
  • Open source
  • Features
  • Graphical pipeline configuration
  • GitHub support
  • Bitbucket support
  • Gitlab support
  • Built-in rest reports
  • Built-in flaky test detection
  • Monorepo support
  • Debugging feedback loop
  • Command-line interface
  • Declarative configuration of services
  • Machine & Operating System support
  • Multiple machine types in cloud model
  • Linux
  • macOS
  • ARM
  • Windows
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Manage multiple deployment environments
  • Multi-stage releases
  • Automatic and manual promotions
  • Deployment dashboards
  • Parameterized promotions
  • Deployment queues
  • Performance
  • Top-of-market performance
  • Autoscaling parallelism
  • Allocate more CPUs and RAM to complex jobs
  • Scalable dependency cache
  • Built-in artifacts store
  • Built-in Docker registry
  • Security
  • Runtime isolation
  • IP allow list
  • Audit logs
  • ISO 27001 certificate
  • SOC 2 certificate
  • Role-based access
  • Okta / SAML for LDAP integration
  • Support
  • Email-based account and technical support
  • Video call support
  • Support SLAs
  • Custom solution engineering
  • Dedicated customer success manager
  • Private Slack channel
  • Community support via Discord
    • Semaphore Cloud
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
      β“˜ SaaS with autoscaling resources
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Workflow Builder: point-and-click interface to create and edit pipelines
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Fast debugging via SSH access to both running and finished jobs.
    • βœ…
      β“˜ CLI can manage projects and do everything the UI can
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Supported via CLI
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Wide choice of CPU, memory, and disk space configurations
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Supported in self-hosted model
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Supported in self-hosted model
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Combine automatic steps with manual approval to ensure maximum reliability when delivering to users
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Chain pipelines together for any CD workflow (blue/green, canary, etc.)
    • βœ…
      β“˜ See which versions of all your applications have been deployed to which environment
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Define custom forms to parameterize CD pipelines
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Control which pipelines must run sequentially to prevent conflict and which may run in parallel
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
      β“˜ 25%-100% faster than GitHub Actions workflows, depending on project
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Serverless model
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Change one line of configuration
    • βœ…
      β“˜ 9.6GB upgradeable on request, expires after 30 days
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    • SaaS subscription: Semaphore provides a typical cloud computing pay-as-you-go plan and Enterprise plans
    • Semaphore CE
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • ❌
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    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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    • ❌
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    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • ❌
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    • βœ…
    • ⭐
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
    • βœ…
    • ❌
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    • ⭐
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    • βœ…
    • Open-source and free to use. Must be installed on your hardware or cloud. Licensed under Apache 2 model. Support is provided on a best effort basis and we support a community Discord server to collaborate on support and development.
    • GitHub Actions
    • ⭐⭐
    • ❌
      β“˜ Hard limits on parallel jobs depending on plan
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐
    • ❌
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
      β“˜ No direct SSH access to job environment, only log inspection.
    • ❌
      β“˜ CLI limited to viewing workflow results
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐⭐
    • ❌
      β“˜ End user maintains the machines
    • βœ…
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Max 5 parallel jobs on standard plans
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Supported in self-hosted model
    • βœ…
      β“˜ Supported in cloud and self-hosted models
    • ⭐
    • βœ…
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ❌
    • ⭐⭐
    • ❌
    • βœ…
      β“˜ With hard limits depending on plan
    • ❌
    • βœ…
      β“˜ 10GB hard limit, expires after 7 days
    • βœ…
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    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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    • ❌
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    • SaaS subscription: GitHhub provides a typical cloud computing pay-as-you-go plan and Enterprise plans
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