Slipway vs CircleCI and Buildkite
CircleCI and Buildkite are focused CI platforms with strong reputations for speed and scale. Both treat deployment as “another pipeline step”. Slipway is CI plus a first-class deployment model.
Where they overlap
Section titled “Where they overlap”Pipeline-as-code, parallelism and matrices, caching, artifacts, test reporting, self-hosted execution, OIDC tokens, orbs or plugins for reuse.
CircleCI
Section titled “CircleCI”| Topic | CircleCI | Slipway |
|---|---|---|
| Config | .circleci/config.yml with workflows, jobs, orbs |
.slipway/*.yaml with stages, jobs, templates |
| Deployments | Deploy via jobs and the deploys UI; promotion by workflow logic | Release, lifecycle and strategy engine |
| Reuse | Orbs | Registry steps and org templates |
| Resources | Resource classes | Runner pools and labels; hosted sizes as multiples of a pool |
| Pricing | Credits and seats | Per org flat; self-hosted free |
Buildkite
Section titled “Buildkite”| Topic | Buildkite | Slipway |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Hosted control plane; agents you run | Hosted or self-hosted control plane; runners you run |
| Pipelines | Dynamic pipelines uploaded by steps | Static YAML with CEL, matrices and conditions; templates for reuse |
| Deployments | Block steps and scripts | Environments, approvals, gates, strategies, verification |
| Pricing | Per-user with agent usage | Per org, unlimited users, unlimited self-hosted runners |
Slipway’s runner design matches Buildkite’s strongest idea: agents dial out and you control the compute.
Concept mapping (to Slipway)
Section titled “Concept mapping (to Slipway)”| CircleCI | Buildkite | Slipway |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow | Pipeline | Pipeline |
| Job | Step group / job | Job |
run: |
command: |
run: |
| Orb | Plugin | uses: step or template |
| Executor / resource class | Agent queue | Runner pool and labels |
| Context | Secrets / pipeline env | Secrets, scoped |
when: |
if: |
if: |
| Approval job | Block step | Approval gate on an environment |
Choose them when
Section titled “Choose them when”You want a best-in-class dedicated CI product and handle deployment elsewhere.
Choose Slipway when
Section titled “Choose Slipway when”You want delivery to be one model rather than CI plus a deployment layer, and you want pricing without per-seat or per-credit surprises.