A code repository platform is a crucial player in your techstack – but if you’re currently evaluating your tooling, or considering migrating to a new product, how do you know which one is right for you? That’s the question we’ll aim to answer today, focusing on two of the biggest names out there: Bitbucket and GitHub.
At first glance, they appear similar tools, both designed to enhance collaboration, and manage changes and feedback.
In this article, however, we’ll take a closer look at each to help you understand their unique differences and value. Our aim is to guide you to a fair and balanced decision around which platform is best suited for your needs.
We’ll begin our Bitbucket vs GitHub comparison with an overview of both tools, before moving on to explore:
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Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud
Bitbucket, launched by Atlassian in 2008, is a prominent source code repository hosting service.
A little background for you: Whilst we’re now used to Git being the default Distributed Version Control System (DVCS), when Bitbucket first launched it also supported Mercurial. At the time, this marked Bitbucket as fairly unique, and broadened its appeal compared to GitHub (which only offered Git). Since then, however, we’ve seen the dominance of Git increase significantly, and in 2020, Atlassian announced it was retiring support for Mercurial.
Nowadays, Bitbucket ranks among the most popular Git hosting services available (although, as we’ll touch on in the next section, GitHub takes the crown for largest).
It’s also worth mentioning that there is a Bitbucket Data Center version available for on-premises customers. In today’s post, however, we’ll focus on Atlassian Bitbucket Cloud.
Bitbucket capabilities, strengths and integrations at a glance
Let’s turn our attention to Bitbucket’s key strengths. Why is it so widely used?
From our perspective, one of its most valuable features is the native integration with other Atlassian products, like Jira and Confluence. This integration unlocks reducing context-switching and seamless collaboration, enabling teams to streamline workflows and enhance project management.
Also worth a mention is Bitbucket’s built-in continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) capabilities through Bitbucket Pipelines, which simplify the automation of development processes.
Bitbucket supports various valuable integrations:
Project Management: The platform seamlessly integrates with Jira Cloud, as we’ve already mentioned, enabling advanced issue tracking and the ability to link pull requests to Jira issues.
CI/CD: As touched on, with Bitbucket Pipelines, you benefit from an integrated CI/CD solution within the platform, making deployment processes straightforward without the need for third-party tools.
Monitoring: Integration with Opsgenie for incident management guarantees efficient monitoring and response. Do note that Atlassian recently announced it is ending support for Opsgenie in April 2027. We’ll be sharing our insights into Opsgenie alternatives soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Another noteworthy feature is Enhanced Security; Bitbucket offers Branch Permissions, providing granular access control.
💡 Spotlight on AI and Bitbucket/GitHub
As you’d expect from innovative Cloud platforms, both Bitbucket and GitHub have been steadily investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities.
For those using Bitbucket Premium, you can enable Atlassian Intelligence features, which include AI-powered pull-request (PR) descriptions and generative AI editing. Bitbucket users can also benefit from Atlassian Rovo’s enterprise search capabilities, to centralise knowledge and context.
Over at GitHub, meanwhile, there’s GitHub Copilot, billed as the ‘AI editor for everyone’. From reviewing code and providing feedback, to next-edit suggestions, it looks like a pretty comprehensive set of capabilities. Whilst not a Microsoft Copilot equivalent (the latter being solely for use across Microsoft 365 apps, and the GitHub version designed exclusively for use in GitHub – unsurprisingly!), both were built on the same technology, and share the same name due to Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub in 2018.
GitHub
GitHub is a leading cloud-based platform for hosting projects that use the Git version control system. With over 100 million developers and 420 million repositories, it’s earned the accolade of largest code hosting platform globally. Users can store their code in ‘repositories’, which showcase their work and facilitate change tracking, conflict-free collaboration, and peer feedback.
As with Bitbucket, the platform enhances teamwork through Git, which meticulously tracks file changes. Users typically work locally and then synchronise updates with the remote repository on GitHub, using features like ‘pull requests’ to streamline collaboration.
GitHub capabilities, strengths and integrations at a glance
GitHub supports extensive integrations across various categories, including project management, CI/CD, and monitoring. Similar to Bitbucket, integrations include:
Project Management:
The integrated issue tracker, GitHub Issues, means you can efficiently manage tasks directly within your project.
GitHub’s built-in Projects feature, meanwhile, offers Trello-like boards for effective task and workflow management.
CI/CD: Popular CI/CD tools such as Codefresh, CircleCI, and GitHub Actions facilitate robust pipeline automation.
Monitoring: GitHub integrates with tools like Sentry and LogRocket to enhance application monitoring and performance tracking.
Whether you’re specifically exploring Bitbucket or GitHub alternatives, or are reviewing your wider Cloud infrastructure and tooling, we’re here to help. From managing your Cloud migration, to providing best practice and Atlassian tooling implementation, we bring two decades of Agile, DevOps and Atlassian expertise to your project.
AWS Deployments
Recently billed at the most popular Cloud hosting platform, it’s worth touching on the interplay between AWS and both Bitbucket and GitHub.
Bitbucket Cloud and AWS
Bitbucket offers strong AWS integration, especially via Bitbucket Pipelines. Users can configure pipelines to deploy code to AWS services like ECS, S3, and Lambda.
Now, whilst we are Atlassian champions through and through, we have to be transparent here – it’s fair to say that Bitbucket lacks the depth of GitHub’s marketplace for pre-built AWS workflows. However, its tight integration with Atlassian products can simplify deployments for teams already using Jira and Confluence.
This my also be an area which evolves further in the future. We recently delved a little deeper into the partnership between Atlassian and AWS, and, as Atlassian continue to invest in a Cloud-first future, we may see a strengthening of Bitbucket’s AWS pre-configured workflows and actions.
Based on Atlassian’s roadmap, we can certainly see continued investment in Bitbucket Cloud. Coming soon, for example, are automated queue strategies for deployments in Pipelines.
GitHub and AWS
As you’d expect, GitHub also integrates effectively with AWS services, particularly through GitHub Actions, which allows you to build, test, and deploy code to AWS.
Pre-built AWS workflows and actions, meanwhile, simplify tasks such as deploying to Amazon S3, EC2, or Lambda (if you’d like to discover more about this, you could take a look at the AWS GitHub Integration Guide). Additionally, GitHub Enterprise can be deployed on AWS infrastructure, offering scalability and performance for enterprise customers.
As an AWS Select Partner, Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner, and Cloud Specialized Partner, we are ideally placed to guide your teams to long-term success. Trust us to migrate, consolidate and optimise your Atlassian Cloud sites and tooling, for enhanced collaboration and value across the System of Work.
Unique strengths
We’ve covered a fair amount in this comparison, so let’s take a moment to recap each platform’s key strengths and USPs, before we move on to our final section.
Bitbucket Cloud:
Ideal for teams leveraging Atlassian’s ecosystem, such as Jira
Primarily used by organisations (rather than open-source projects)
Features integrated CI/CD pipelines through Bitbucket Pipelines
Almost 500 apps for Bitbucket available on the Atlassian Marketplace to extend and enhance the platform
GitHub:
A leader in the open-source community
Provides robust automation and CI/CD capabilities via GitHub Actions
Extensive AWS workflows and enterprise deployment options may provide a slight edge for larger or more complex projects
GitHub vs Bitbucket: Pricing
Last but not least, we come to cost-efficiency.
Both Bitbucket and GitHub’s pricing models are tiered, based on the number of users and the level of features required, and encompassing three tiers:
Free Plan: Both platforms offer generous free plans. However, GitHub allows for unlimited users, whereas Bitbucket limits its free plan to just five.
Team/Standard and Premium/Enterprise Plans: GitHub’s Team plan is slightly more expensive than Bitbucket’s Standard plan, but it does include additional features, such as advanced CI/CD capabilities through GitHub Actions. In contrast, Bitbucket provides CI/CD functionality across all its plans via Bitbucket Pipelines, with Dynamic CI/CD pipelines available exclusively on the Premium plan.
Build Minutes and Storage:
While Bitbucket offers fewer build minutes and lower storage quotas in its Premium plan compared to GitHub Enterprise, it is a little more affordable. Bitbucket also provides users with the flexibility to purchase extra build minutes each month, if needed.
However, if you are a Free Tier user, it’s worth noting that GitHub is more generous, providing 2000 build min/month compared to Bitbucket’s 50 build min/month.
Bitbucket vs GitHub: Who comes out on top?
GitHub and Bitbucket both offer robust integration options and support for Git repositories. It’s not easy to award one the top spot over the other, as they are broadly similar tools. However, if we had to give our final take, it’d be this:
We’d say that GitHub provides a broader marketplace and features like GitHub Actions for CI/CD, making it ideal for teams looking for flexibility and expansive integrations.
But ultimately, for us, its Bitbucket’s native integration with Atlassian tools, like Jira, that make it such a strong choice for teams heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem.
It’s difficult to go wrong with either GitHub or Bitbucket, as both tools are well-established and well-regarded. But remember, selecting your tooling is just a first step. For long-term success, you need to ensure your DevOps, CI/CD and Cloud strategies are finely optimised and aligned with best practice. And that’s where a dedicated Agile and DevOps consultancy (with a healthy dose of Atlassian expertise) can help!
Still not sure what's the right platform for your team?
As an Atlassian Platinum Solutions Partner, we have the expertise to guide you in selecting the best repository for your needs. If you are still weighing the benefits of Bitbucket vs. GitHub, we’ll help you maximise the value of your tools.
