GitHub Actions icon

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform that allows you to automate your software development workflows. You can build, test, and deploy your code right from GitHub.

What is GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions is an automation platform that allows developers to automate software development workflows within GitHub. It uses YAML-based workflow files that you store in a code repository to build out tasks called actions. GitHub Actions goes beyond continuous integration and delivery by allowing you to run workflows when events happen in your repository.

Some key features and capabilities of GitHub Actions include:

  • Automating software workflows including building, testing, packaging, releasing and deploying code
  • Triggering workflows on various events like code pushes, pull requests, issue creation etc.
  • Using GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runners to run your workflows
  • Reusing workflows from the GitHub Marketplace
  • Integrating easily with other GitHub features like packages, pages and more
  • Hosted directly in your GitHub repository to simplify development
  • Includes flexible management capabilities like environments, secrets and permissions

GitHub Actions facilitates best practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery for software teams to ship better code, faster. The tight integration with GitHub repositories and surrounding ecosystem makes GitHub Actions a powerful automation framework.

The Best GitHub Actions Alternatives

Top Apps like GitHub Actions

Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, Earthly, Codeship, Cyclic, AppVeyor, Cicada.sh, Taskcluster, Semaphore are some alternatives to GitHub Actions.

Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source automation server that enables developers around the world to reliably build, test, and deploy their software. It provides continuous integration and continuous delivery capabilities out of the box with hundreds of plugins to support building, deploying, and automating any project.Jenkins can be used as...

Travis CI

Travis CI is a popular continuous integration platform that is designed specifically for building and testing software projects hosted on GitHub. It provides a free plan for open source projects hosted on GitHub, making it a popular choice for developers working on open source software.Here are some key things...

CircleCI

CircleCI is a continuous integration and delivery platform designed to help developers build, test, and deploy applications with speed and confidence. It provides cloud-based infrastructure for running automated jobs in Linux containers, allowing code to be built, tested, and delivered rapidly and reliably.Some key features of CircleCI include:Automated...

Earthly

Earthly is an open-source build automation tool designed specifically for monorepo-style codebases. It provides developers a simple way to define their build workflows and dependencies in a declarative Earthfile, then handles executing builds efficiently.Key features of Earthly include:Automatic parallelization - Earthly analyzes dependencies and runs independent build steps...

Codeship

Codeship is a cloud-based continuous integration and delivery service that helps development teams test, build and deploy their code quickly and efficiently. Some key features of Codeship include:Fully automated build, test and deployment pipelinesIntegration with GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab for easy code hosting and managementParallel testing for faster test...

Cyclic

Cyclic is an open-source alternative to Postman used for API testing, development, and documentation. Some key features of Cyclic include:Intuitive UI for sending various HTTP requests like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.Variables and collections to easily reuse components across requests and projectsEnvironments for managing multiple API configurationsBuilt-in documentation...

AppVeyor

AppVeyor is a cloud-based continuous integration service designed specifically for building and testing .NET applications. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, Bitbucket and other source control providers to automatically build and test each time developers push code.Key features of AppVeyor include:Support for .NET Framework, .NET Core, Node.js, Ruby...

Cicada.sh

Cicada.sh is an open-source personal knowledge management and sharing platform. It enables users to capture and share knowledge using a structured, networked note-taking system, inspired by technologies like Roam Research and Obsidian.With Cicada.sh, you can organize your notes and thoughts into an interconnected network rather than a...

Taskcluster

Taskcluster is an open source platform optimized for automating software testing and deployment processes. It enables developers to run tasks at scale across a variety of environments including physical, virtual, and containerized infrastructure.Key features of Taskcluster include:Flexible task definition using YAML for specifying dependencies, deadlines, artifacts, routes, scopes...

Semaphore

Semaphore is a hosted continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform designed for agile development teams. It allows developers to easily automate their development pipelines to test, build and deploy software applications faster and more efficiently.Some key features of Semaphore include:Fast and reliable CI/CD pipelinesSupport for...