# Buildhound vs Buildkite

> Buildkite is a CI service with its own pipelines: its agents run on your machines, or on its hosted machines by the minute, with a fee per user. Buildhound runs your GitHub Actions workflows on machines you already have, for a flat price per machine.

## A month of macOS CI

List prices, before free minutes or credits on any side, cheapest first at 5,000 minutes. One machine runs these minutes a job at a time; more jobs at once need more machines, each counted only on days it runs a job.

| Option | 2,000 minutes | 5,000 minutes | 10,000 minutes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Buildhound Personal (one machine you already have) | $10 | $10 | $10 |
| Buildhound Team (one machine you already have) | $24 | $24 | $24 |
| [GitHub-hosted](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing), checked 15 October 2026 (`macos-latest`, list price) | $124 | $310 | $620 |
| [Buildkite](https://buildkite.com/pricing), checked 17 October 2026 (Hosted M4 Medium, 6 vCPU, list price, at least the $30 plan) | $240 | $600 | $1,200 |

- At 2,000 minutes: One Mac you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $240, and GitHub-hosted $124.
- At 5,000 minutes: One Mac you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $600, and GitHub-hosted $310.
- At 10,000 minutes: One Mac you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $1,200, and GitHub-hosted $620.

## A month of Linux CI

List prices, before free minutes or credits on any side, cheapest first at 5,000 minutes. One machine runs these minutes a job at a time; more jobs at once need more machines, each counted only on days it runs a job.

| Option | 2,000 minutes | 5,000 minutes | 10,000 minutes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Buildhound Personal (one machine you already have) | $10 | $10 | $10 |
| Buildhound Team (one machine you already have) | $24 | $24 | $24 |
| [GitHub-hosted](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/reference/actions-runner-pricing), checked 15 October 2026 (`ubuntu-latest`, list price) | $12 | $30 | $60 |
| [Buildkite](https://buildkite.com/pricing), checked 17 October 2026 (Hosted Small, 2 vCPU, list price, at least the $30 plan) | $30 | $40 | $80 |

- At 2,000 minutes: One machine you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $30, and GitHub-hosted $12.
- At 5,000 minutes: One machine you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $40, and GitHub-hosted $30.
- At 10,000 minutes: One machine you already have costs $24 a month on Team. Buildkite costs $80, and GitHub-hosted $60.

## Choose Buildkite when

- You run a large monorepo and want pipelines generated as they run.
- You want CI agents on your own machines at any scale, with Buildkite running the rest.
- Your team is moving off GitHub Actions anyway.

## Choose Buildhound when

- Your CI already lives in GitHub Actions.
- You want your machines with GitHub-hosted as the fallback, without a fee per user.
- You want a fresh VM for every job on the machines you have.

## Side by side

Buildkite's side is from its own pages ([source](https://buildkite.com/pricing)), checked 17 October 2026.

### Price

| | Buildhound | Buildkite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| How it is priced | Flat, per machine. $10 a machine a month on a personal account, $24 in an organisation, counted only on days it runs a job. Public repositories free. | Per user, plus hosted minutes. $30 per active user a month on Pro; hosted agents by the minute; your own agents included up to the plan's limit. |
| macOS | Your Mac. A fresh macOS VM per job; Apple allows two per Mac. | $0.12 a minute. Hosted M4 Medium, 6 vCPU, or your own Mac as an agent. |
| Linux | Your Mac or Linux box. A fresh Linux VM per job, arm64 on a Mac. | $0.008 a minute. Hosted Small, 2 vCPU, or your own machine as an agent. |
| Windows | Not yet. Windows jobs stay on GitHub-hosted. | Your own agents. Its hosted agents are Linux and macOS. |

### Where it runs

| | Buildhound | Buildkite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Machines | Yours. A spare Mac, a Linux box, or a laptop while plugged in and not in use. | Your machines or Buildkite's. |

### When things change

| | Buildhound | Buildkite |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Setup | One prompt to your coding agent. Or two commands by hand. | Pipelines and the agent. Buildkite's own pipeline files, not GitHub Actions. |

## One line in runs-on

Buildkite pipelines run on Buildkite agents from its own pipeline files, not from runs-on in GitHub Actions. Buildhound, on your machine while one can take the job and on GitHub-hosted when none can:

```yaml
runs-on: ${{ vars.BUILDHOUND_MACOS || 'macos-latest' }}
```

Buildhound has no referral agreement with Buildkite. Source: https://buildhound.sh/compare/buildkite.