Buildbot vs Semaphore: What are the differences?

Developers describe Buildbot as "Python-based continuous integration testing framework". BuildBot is a system to automate the compile/test cycle required by most software projects to validate code changes. By automatically rebuilding and testing the tree each time something has changed, build problems are pinpointed quickly, before other developers are inconvenienced by the failure. On the other hand, Semaphore is detailed as "The continuous integration and delivery platform powering the world’s best engineering teams". Semaphore is the fastest continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform on the market, powering the world’s best engineering teams.

Buildbot and Semaphore can be categorized as "Continuous Integration" tools.

Some of the features offered by Buildbot are:

• run builds on a variety of slave platforms
• arbitrary build process: handles projects using C, Python, whatever
• minimal host requirements: Python and Twisted

On the other hand, Semaphore provides the following key features:

• Docker, Kubernetes, iOS support & 100+ preinstalled Tools
• Customizable Continuous Delivery Pipelines
• Customizable Stages, Parallel Execution and Control Flow Switches

"Highly configurable builds" is the primary reason why developers consider Buildbot over the competitors, whereas "Easy setup" was stated as the key factor in picking Semaphore.

Buildbot is an open source tool with 4K GitHub stars and 1.37K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Buildbot's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Semaphore has a broader approval, being mentioned in 40 company stacks & 17 developers stacks; compared to Buildbot, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 6 developer stacks.