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Git Wars: GitHub vs Bitbucket

Git Wars: GitHub vs Bitbucket

Introduction

Now, you might think the answer I'm going to give you is already obvious because I'm using GiHub right now, but it's not. Both GitHub and Bitbucket offer great Git services, but each has its own features and pricing plans. In the following... thing, I'm going to compare the two and then offer a final solution that should work for most people.

TL;DR: Both. Use GitHub for open source and public repos (you'll spend most of your time here) and Bitbucket for private repos. But, sign up for GitHub first, then import account into Bitbucket. Also, check comments for updates. P.S. I personally prefer GitHub.

Interface and Functionality

Both Bitbucket and GitHub really have the interface and functionality pinned down. They both can do basically whatever you need, while getting out of your way, being easy to use and looking awesome, so that's not much of a consideration. The only gripes I have with GitHub are that they are a little inconsitent with their editors and I cannot set the language of my repo, like in Bitbucket. For Bitbucket, though, I find the interface a little less pretty and a little harder to navigate. Again, all concerns here are pretty insignificant, as both do excellent jobs.

Bitbucket Homescreen

Bitbucket

GitHub Homescreen

GitHub

Public Repos and Open Source Development

GitHub is the clear winner here. Unlike Bitbucket, it doesn't limit the number of contributors and has way more users. Also, it hosts a large number of major projects, like Linux and jQuery. So, if all you do is open source development and nothing else, go with GitHub.

Private Repos

Bitbucket is the clear winner here. Unlike GitHub, you can create an unlimited number of private repositories. So, if all you want is a fancy Dropbox and nothing else, go with Bitbucket.

Pricing and Plans

Bitbucket

From https://bitbucket.org/account/user//plans/.

All plans have:

  • Unlimited private repos
  • etc.
Free $10 / mo $25 / mo $50 / mo $100 / mo $200 / mo
5 Users 10 Users 25 Users 50 Users 100 Users Unlimited Users

GitHub

From https://github.com/pricing.

All plans have:

  • Unlimited collaborators
  • etc.
Free $7 / mo $12 / mo $22 / mo $50 / mo
0 Private Repos 5 Private Repos 10 Private Repos 20 Private Repos 50 Private Repos

(unfortunately, no unlimited plan :()

Note on Enterprise and Organizations

Yes, I know they are different, but I'm not counting them. I'm looking at the personal plans because that's what most people will go for.

Conclusion

So, what should you get? Well, that really depends upon you, of course, but the way I see it: Both. Let's, for a moment, say you want to go for a free plan, but you're not sure which site to use. If you sign up for GitHub then import your GitHub account in Bitbucket, you're good to go! For all your public/open source/social stuff, use GitHub. For your private repos that few will see, use Bitbucket!

If you're going for a paid plan, that really depends upon you're budget and needs. You should then consider looking into organization and enterprise plans, as well. This is a more difficult choice. In the end, it's what is best for you.

Notes

External stuff

Be sure to check out the following internet thingies:

Modification and Changey-things

Because I do not control any external resource listed here (except maybe Uppagus <-- Shameless plug, please excuse :P), I cannot guarentee their up-to-date-ness. They will probably change. If they do, I will try to keep up with them, but before buying anything, check with the respective company. GitHub and Bitbucket may change their prices behind my back (as they do). If you (the reader) notice some discrepencies with the offical sources, please let me know, and I will update accordingly.

Spelling/Grammar

I suck at spelling. Please let me know if I have mspelled anything. I'll correct it. Same goes for grammar.

@neilbo
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neilbo commented Feb 3, 2015

Did you ironically misspell "misspelled"?

@lmedinas
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Another missing point is the social features present in GitHub. It's almost non existent on Bitbucket.
For sure Bitbucket offers several advantages like Jira, private repos, apps, etc... but GitHub is the way to go if you want to opensource your code.

@AlexVPopov
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This is an excellent comparison, but really lacks a review for teams/organizations.

@ThomasA
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ThomasA commented Apr 2, 2015

@dosire I have looked at GitLab as well and used it a bit as external collaborator to someone else's project. I think particularly your inclusion of continuous integration/test looks very attractive.

@vjpr
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vjpr commented Jun 11, 2015

Github's pricing is ridiculous and out-dated. Maybe back in the day of monolithic apps. But these days with micro-services, and npm, its not unusual to have lots of repos.

@GiantDarth
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I fixed a type from "you're budget" to "your budget". https://gist.github.com/chaos7theory/6a1931bd165826432dcc

@Dundonian
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Bitbucket now also has Connect that lets 3rd party developers integrate add-ons directly into the Bitbucket UI. For example, Aerobatic provides a static hosting add-on (disclaimer: I'm one of the Aerobatic founders).

@davidmontgom
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After 5 years of being with GH..starting out paying 7$ a month and up to 50$ a month...... bye bye GitHub. Moved 25 private repos to bitbucket in less then 10 minutes. I was thing about the change when I hit 20 a month but after 50....no way.

@lukehutton
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Same here, our team migrated to bitbucket since we hit the repo cap. A shame, think they need to reconsider pricing model.

@gregl83
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gregl83 commented Feb 20, 2016

GitHub as a service is awesome; however, they desperately NEED to change their pricing model.

There are a lot of advantages to packaging smaller units of code (decoupling) and that's the trend with many communities. Unfortunately, not everything can be open source.

Payment SHOULD be based on actual usage like the majority of other web services. All repos are NOT equal and I'm confident that the 80:20 rule applies to usage of system resources.

@github, please change private repo payments to be based on actual utilization of resources rather than a arbitrary repository count!

@hk0i
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hk0i commented Mar 14, 2016

GitHub has syntax highlighting on pull requests... bitbucket doesn't. They do have an open ticket since 2013.

I guess I can see a benefit to getting both. Depends on your team size. If you're expecting your team size to increase but not your number of repos, go with GitHub.

On the other hand, BitBucket also integrates nicely with Jira which a lot of teams use anyway.

I doubt GitHub will ever change their pricing model, it seems to me like this model is designed around promoting open source software.

@ffxsam
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ffxsam commented Mar 25, 2016

@dosire I really like GitLab, but please improve your servers! It's quite slow pushing code up compared to GitHub and BitBucket.

@ieb-mark
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Bitbucket does not provide the ability to search source code. There is a ticket to resolve, however it has been open since 2011.

It is also possible to tag pull requests with labels in GitHub.

The graphs feature is entirely missing from Bitbucket.

@denisdenes
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I guess you have to update this, check it out here: https://github.com/blog/2164-introducing-unlimited-private-repositories

@palypster
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palypster commented May 18, 2016

For a team of 25 users you pay 25$/month on Bitbucket but 525$/month on GitHub. That's 2100% difference.. wow! Am I missing something?

@murilogibim
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@palypster with the new pricing plans I think your math is outdated. I'm using the Personal plan and it has already been updated to have unlimited repositories.

If you choose the Personal plan you may have one admin account creating all the repositories and have the other 25 users invited to collaborate. The admin account is billed for 7$ a month and the other users don't get billed.
If you choose the Organization plan you will pay 25$ for the first 5 users and an additional 9$ for each developer you include in your organization. 25$ + (9$ * 20) = 205$ per month.

Please, someone correct me if I got anything wrong:
https://github.com/blog/2164-introducing-unlimited-private-repositories

@RileyMajor
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I forked this, fixed a spelling error, and updated the pricing tables to reflect GitHub's new pricing system.

https://gist.github.com/RileyMajor/0113512628b694a91f6bcebd753ad9db

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ghost commented Jul 28, 2016

Bitbucket will not be importing GitHub accounts, Facebook accounts, or Twitter accounts in the future.

https://bitbucket.org/account/signin/?next=/account/signup/#social-auth

@h3ct0rjs
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Gitlab seems a great option, this should be mentioned in this gist

@Barium
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Barium commented Sep 12, 2016

BitBucket supports mercurial, which is the selling point for me, I much prefer the command line for mercurial, I like the simplistic interface of GitHub more though.

@Vantalk
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Vantalk commented Oct 14, 2016

This is not accurate anymore.

https://github.com/pricing
"Our pricing options have changed

All paid plans now include unlimited private repositories, and organizations can pay based on their team size, not on how many repositories they use."

@iszen
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iszen commented Nov 4, 2016

"The only gripes I have with GitHub are that they are a little inconsitent with their editors..."
misspelled inconsistent

Thanks for the post 👍

@mmahmoudian
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Regarding Github pricing table, I forked your gist and modified that part. (consider this as pull request ;) )

https://gist.github.com/mmahmoudian/2ae884ba7e339223bead1271cb327096

@HankB
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HankB commented Nov 25, 2016

Thanks for the info. I have personal (free) accounts on both. At the moment I'm using Github the most and it is for public repos. I guess I'm using it right. I don't think anyone looks at them but that's not important. :D

I'm also using Bitbucket at work. One thing that drives me nuts is their markdown renderer. There are so many things that break. In particular, code examples are almost never rendered as code examples. I consider a decent README an important part of my efforts and find myself constantly battling with Bitbucket to accomplish what I want.

Does this render as code?
Wheee! It works!

I'm also a bit surprised that neither provides the ability to handle merge conflicts on the web site. The instructions on Bitbucket is to deal with that locally and push the results. I guess I should be happy that I can edit my README.md on the site so I can see immediately how it mangles my markdown. <rolls eyes>

@jonico
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jonico commented Feb 23, 2017

'm also a bit surprised that neither provides the ability to handle merge conflicts on the web site. The instructions on Bitbucket is to deal with that locally and push the results. I guess I should be happy that I can edit my README.md on the site so I can see immediately how it mangles my markdown.

@HankB: Now merge conflict resolution in the UI shipped on GitHub

@rkd-me
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rkd-me commented Mar 4, 2017

The GitHub screenshot is outdated. :)

@TuneBot
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TuneBot commented Apr 5, 2017

"If you're going for a paid plan, that really depends upon you're budget and needs" (https://gist.github.com/foogit/8410710#conclusion) should be "If you're going for a paid plan, that really depends upon your budget and needs".

@smcstewart
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Brand spanking new pricing model for GitHub now... including unlimited repos for $7 / month. Still more expensive than BitBucket, however.

@sparcut
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sparcut commented Nov 29, 2017

The irony of posting Github vs Bitbucket on Github.

@Julia991
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I could also recommend you the research about three repositories - GitHub vs BitBucket vs GitLab: Developers' Research

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