Build 2Γ— Faster with Semaphore Compared to Travis CI

Travis CI vs. Semaphore: key differences

Travis CI pain πŸ˜–Semaphore gain πŸš€
🐒 Slower build times⚑ High-performance builds with auto-scaling
πŸ”„ Limited workflow customizationπŸ› οΈ Flexible, visual pipeline editor
πŸ”’ Basic secret managementπŸ” Advanced secrets handling with fine-grained control
πŸ“‰ Inconsistent support and updates🀝 Proactive, expert support team
🧩 Limited integrations and extensibilityπŸ”Œ Rich ecosystem with extensive integrations

Why teams choose Semaphore over Travis CI

No more build limits or slowdowns 🚫🐒

Travis CI often struggles with job limits and unreliable performance. With Semaphore:

  • βœ”οΈ No job queue delays
  • βœ”οΈ Auto-scaling CI/CD infrastructure
  • βœ”οΈ Predictable performance under load

πŸ“Œ Stay fastβ€”even during peak hours.

β€œWith TravisCI, builds were flaky and these issues only occurred on TravisCI. With Semaphore, the Ruby gem builds run perfectly, no random failures, and it’s done a lot faster.”

Developer

Ship faster with smart parallelism ⚑

Travis builds often stall due to limited concurrency. Semaphore unlocks speed with:

  • βœ”οΈ Optimized parallel testing
  • βœ”οΈ Flexible resource allocation
  • βœ”οΈ Instant feedback for devs

πŸ“Œ Less waiting, more deploying.

β€œTravis CI was slow and our custom script for parallel tests was a pain to maintain. With Semaphore, test splitting just works β€” no upkeep needed. It’s saved us time and made the team happier.”

Developer

Better visibility, easier debugging 🧭

Travis lacks insights into what’s going wrong. Semaphore gives you:

  • βœ”οΈ Real-time logs and workflow visibility
  • βœ”οΈ Easy-to-navigate pipelines
  • βœ”οΈ Built-in debugging tools

πŸ“Œ Spot and fix issues faster.

β€œI think SemaphoreCI is a great way to supervise CI/CD workflows. What is very useful for me is the SSH debugging feature helping with troubleshooting pipelines.”

Consulting

πŸ‘€ at a glance πŸ‘‡

πŸŒ₯️

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Saas

SaaS subscription model for cloud CI/CD, with pay-as-you-go and per-seat Enterprise plans.

🌐

⭐⭐⭐

Open source

Open-Source and free to use. Must be installed on your hardware or cloud. Licensed under Apache 2 model.

πŸ•°οΈ

⭐⭐⭐

SaaS

Travis CI is easy to set up and free for open source, but has slow build times, limited concurrency and higher private-repo costs.

πŸ“‹ Full feature comparison

πŸ‘‰ Swipe to compare β†’

  • Features
  • Product type
  • SaaS
  • Hybrid
  • Fully on-premises
  • Features
  • Standard project set up in a few clicks
  • GitHub support
  • Bitbucket support
  • Gitlab support
  • Standardized product
  • Graphical pipeline configuration
  • Standardized configuration language
  • Command-line interface
  • Dashboards
  • Test reports
  • Flaky test detection
  • Monorepo support
  • Promotions
  • Preflight checks
  • Parameterized promotions
  • Deployment targets
  • Ease of Maintenance
  • No maintenance required for hardware
  • No maintenance required for platform software
  • No maintenance required for user-facing product
  • Declarative configuration of services
  • Hot upgrades without downtime
  • Operating system support
  • Linux, macOS
  • Windows, ARM
  • Performance
  • Guaranteed desktop-grade performance
  • Autoscaling parallelism
  • Allocate more CPUs and RAM to complex jobs
  • Each job runs in a pristine, isolated environment
  • Scalable dependency cache
  • Built-in artifacts store
  • Built-in Docker registry
  • Debugging feedback loop
  • Permission management
  • Mirror permissions from GitHub
  • Role-based access
  • Okta / SAML for LDAP integration
  • Declarative configuration of permissions
  • Security
  • Application-level security
  • Runtime isolation
  • IP allow list
  • Audit logs
  • ISO 27001 certificate
  • SOC 2 certificate
  • Support
  • Email-based support
  • Video call support
  • Support SLAs
  • Custom solution engineering
  • Dedicated customer success manager
  • Private Slack channel
  • Community support via Discord
    • πŸŒ₯️ Cloud
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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      β“˜SaaS with autoscaling resources
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      β“˜Hybrid: run Semaphore agents on customer-managed infrastructure, use cloud-based UI
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      β“˜Authenticate with Git provider, select repository, import repository as project
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      β“˜All users use the same product maintained by Semaphore
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      β“˜Workflow Builder: point-and-click interface to create and edit pipelines
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      β“˜Declarative YAML configuration for all features
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      β“˜CLI can manage projects and do everything the UI can.
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      β“˜Track perfromance and project health with dashboards. Define dashboards to track development metrics.
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      β“˜Provides a unified dashboard for failures across all runs in a project
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      β“˜Detects flaky tests and provides interface to track and manage them
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      β“˜Support for big monorepo repositories
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      β“˜Create branching workflows for complex CI/CD
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      β“˜Ensure user-defined conditions are met before deploying the application
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      β“˜Use parameters inside your pipelines for greater flexibility
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      β“˜Secure your deployments by defining who and when deployment jobs can run
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      β“˜Official VMs and Docker images are refreshed weekly, include popular OSS tools out-of-the-box
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      β“˜All UI, including real-time and historical pipeline visualizations, logs, and test results is made and continuously improved by Semaphore
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      β“˜Supported via CLI
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      β“˜Use new product features as soon as they are released
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      β“˜Via self-hosted agents
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      β“˜Serverless model
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      β“˜Change one line of configuration
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      β“˜Fast debugging via SSH access to both running and finished jobs
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      β“˜Via official GitHub App
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      β“˜Admins can limit access to deployment, secrets
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      β“˜Only SaaS version supports Okta
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      β“˜All users use the same product maintained by customer
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      β“˜Workflow Builder: point-and-click interface to create and edit pipelines
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      β“˜Declarative YAML configuration for all features
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      β“˜CLI can manage projects and do everything the UI can.
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      β“˜Provides a unified dashboard for failures across all runs in a project
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      β“˜Run Semaphore on your hardware or the cloud
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      β“˜End user in charge of updating Semaphore
    • ❌
      β“˜End user in charge of updating Semaphore
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      β“˜Supported via CLI
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      β“˜Upgrade in place with minimal downtime
    • ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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      β“˜Via self-hosted agents
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      β“˜AWS autoscaler is supplied
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      β“˜Both epehemeral and non-ephemeral environments are supported
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      β“˜Fast debugging via SSH access to both running and finished jobs
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    • πŸ•°οΈ Travis CI
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      β“˜There is a limited, early beta support for windows.
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