GitHub vs Bitbucket: A complete comparison for 2025

Picking the right home for your code is a huge decision. It’s more than just a place to stash files; it’s the command center for your team’s entire development process. When you get it right, everything just clicks and your team can focus on building. Get it wrong, and you’re stuck with daily friction that nobody has time for.

For most teams, this choice usually comes down to two major players: GitHub and Bitbucket. They’re both fantastic, Git-based platforms, but they have different philosophies and are built for slightly different kinds of teams. This guide will walk you through the key differences in features, CI/CD, AI tools, pricing, and security so you can make a choice that actually fits the way your team works.

What is a code repository?

In simple terms, a code repository is a central location to store and manage your project’s source code. But these days, it’s so much more than that. It’s the foundation for version control, which lets your team track every single change, safely experiment with new ideas in separate branches, and quickly rewind to a previous version if something goes sideways.

Both GitHub and Bitbucket use Git, the distributed version control system that’s become the standard everywhere. They put a friendly, web-based interface on top of Git’s command-line power, adding powerful tools for collaboration and project management that turn it into a full-blown ecosystem.

What is GitHub?

GitHub, now owned by Microsoft, is pretty much the biggest code hosting platform on the planet. It’s famous for being the heart of the open-source world, but it’s just as popular with startups and massive companies for their private code. Its real power comes from its massive community, a huge ecosystem of tools, and a relentless push for new features like GitHub Copilot and Actions.

What is Bitbucket?

Bitbucket is Atlassian’s answer to code hosting. It’s a go-to choice for professional teams, especially those already using other Atlassian tools like Jira or Confluence. Bitbucket’s killer feature is its deep, seamless integration with Jira. This lets you connect your code directly to your project tasks, creating a clear line of sight from a new ticket all the way to a deployed feature.

Core features and collaboration

Let’s dig into how each platform handles the day-to-day work of managing code and getting things done as a team.

Code review and pull requests

GitHub

Many developers consider GitHub’s pull request (PR) workflow to be the best in the business. It’s intuitive and full of small details that make collaboration feel effortless. You can drop inline suggestions that the author can accept with a click, set up code owners to automatically ping the right reviewers, and create draft PRs to get feedback on work that’s still in progress. For busy repos, merge queues are a lifesaver, helping to line up and validate PRs before they hit the main branch to prevent broken builds.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/03-A-GitHub-pull-request-showing-Claude-Code-automation.png::A GitHub pull request showing Claude Code automation::A screenshot of a GitHub pull request, which is a core part of the code review process in the GitHub vs Bitbucket comparison.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket’s merge request process is clean, solid, and gets the job done well. Its merge checks are a great feature, letting teams set rules like requiring a minimum number of approvals or a successful build before code can be merged. The view showing what’s changed is clear and easy to follow. It’s all about control and clarity.

Verdict

GitHub’s code review experience feels a bit more polished and has more bells and whistles. Bitbucket provides excellent, no-nonsense functionality that is more than enough for any team.

Project management and issue tracking

GitHub

GitHub offers its own set of project management tools right inside the platform: GitHub Issues and GitHub Projects. You can create Kanban-style boards, track progress on timelines, and organize work without ever leaving your repository. It’s a great fit for teams who want to keep their planning and coding in the same spot and don’t need a super complex system.

Bitbucket

This is where Bitbucket really pulls ahead. Its biggest strength is the native, two-way sync with Jira. You can create a new branch straight from a Jira ticket, and every commit and PR automatically links back to it. This gives you amazing traceability, so anyone, from a project manager to a developer, can see the status of a task and all the code associated with it in one place. You can even set it up to automatically update Jira tickets as code gets merged.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/08-Jira-Service-Management-integrating-with-Jira-Software-in-an-ITSM-customer-service-ticketing-system.png::Jira Service Management integrating with Jira Software in an ITSM customer service ticketing system::A screenshot showing how a Jira ticket seamlessly integrates with the development workflow, a major advantage for Bitbucket in the GitHub vs Bitbucket comparison.

Verdict

If you like simple, all-in-one project management, GitHub’s tools are solid. But if your team relies on a powerful, enterprise-level tool for planning, Bitbucket’s unbreakable bond with Jira Service Management is impossible to beat.

CI/CD, automation, and integrations

Automating your build, test, and deploy process is non-negotiable in modern software development. Here’s how the two platforms compare.

Native CI/CD: GitHub Actions vs Bitbucket Pipelines

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is an incredibly powerful and flexible automation engine. It’s event-driven, which means you can kick off a workflow for just about anything, a new code push, a new issue, a comment on a PR, you name it. Its biggest advantage is the huge GitHub Marketplace, which is filled with thousands of pre-built "actions" from the community. This makes connecting to almost any third-party service a breeze. The free plan is also quite generous, giving you 2,000 minutes per month to play with.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ClaudeCode-GitHub-Actions-Tab.png::GitHub Actions Tab::A view of the GitHub Actions marketplace, showcasing its extensive library of integrations for CI/CD workflows.

Bitbucket Pipelines

Bitbucket Pipelines takes a simpler, more direct approach. It’s built right into Bitbucket and configured with a single "bitbucket-pipelines.yml" file in your repo. This makes getting started really fast, especially for teams that just want a CI/CD solution that works without a lot of fuss. As you’d expect, the integration with other Atlassian tools is top-notch. The free tier is a bit more limited, starting at 50 minutes per month.

Verdict

GitHub Actions is more powerful and can be customized to do almost anything, thanks to its marketplace. Bitbucket Pipelines is a fantastic choice for teams who want simplicity and a smooth experience within the Atlassian world.

The integration ecosystem

GitHub

Beyond just Actions, the GitHub Marketplace is packed with apps for everything in the DevOps lifecycle, from code quality scanners to security monitoring. If there’s a developer tool you use, it almost certainly integrates with GitHub.

Bitbucket

The Atlassian Marketplace is also massive, with hundreds of apps to extend Bitbucket. But the real win is how naturally Bitbucket connects with other Atlassian products like Confluence or Trello, creating one unified place to work.

The support workflow problem

While these tools are great for developers, they often create a new pile of work for IT and support teams. A developer pushes a new feature, and suddenly there are bug reports in Jira or questions in Slack. This is where things can get disconnected. An AI agent from a platform like eesel AI can help bridge this gap. It connects to your knowledge sources (like Confluence docs) and your helpdesk (like Jira) to resolve tickets on its own, creating a smoother path from code commit to customer resolution.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/05-eeselAI-Implementation-Workflow.png::eeselAI Implementation Workflow::A workflow diagram showing how eesel AI connects various knowledge sources to automate the support process that follows development work.

Security and AI capabilities

Keeping your code safe and your developers productive are two sides of the same coin. Let’s see what each platform offers.

Security features

GitHub

GitHub has gone all-in on developer-first security tools. Dependabot automatically scans for known vulnerabilities in your project’s dependencies and opens PRs to fix them for you. Secret scanning alerts you if you accidentally try to commit an API key or other sensitive credentials. For enterprise customers, GitHub Advanced Security adds CodeQL, a seriously powerful analysis engine that finds tricky security bugs in your code.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket’s security is more focused on enterprise-grade access controls. On its Premium plans, you get features like IP allowlisting, enforced merge checks, and mandatory two-factor authentication. For a more comprehensive security layer across all your Atlassian tools, they offer a separate product called Atlassian Guard.

Verdict

GitHub provides more advanced, out-of-the-box security tools that focus on the code itself. Bitbucket is great for locking down access and ensuring compliance, though you may need to buy an add-on to get a similar feature set to GitHub.

AI-powered development

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot has quickly become the standard for AI-assisted coding. It’s an "AI pair programmer" that lives in your editor, offering smart code suggestions and autocompletions. It can write entire functions based on a simple comment and even has a chat interface to help you debug code or figure out what a complex block is doing.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/02-A-screenshot-of-GitHub-Copilot-code-completion-in-action.png::A screenshot of GitHub Copilot code completion in action::A developer’s code editor showing GitHub Copilot suggesting a block of code, a key AI feature in the GitHub vs Bitbucket debate.

Atlassian Intelligence

Atlassian’s AI is a bit different. It’s designed to boost productivity across all its products, not just in your code editor. In Bitbucket, it might help you write a PR description. In Jira and Confluence, it’s more about summarizing long comment threads, improving search, and helping you write documentation. It’s less about writing the code and more about managing the work around the code.

The developer support gap

It’s worth pointing out that both of these AI tools are built to help developers. They’re great for writing and shipping code faster, but they don’t help with the customer support tickets or internal questions that come in after that code is released. This is a big blind spot. An AI Agent from eesel AI is designed for this exact purpose. It learns from your past support conversations and technical docs to give people instant, accurate answers, freeing up your developers from endless support questions so they can get back to building.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/05-eeselAI-An-AI-chatbot-in-Slack-delivering-instant-product-knowledge-to-a-team-member.png::An AI chatbot in Slack delivering instant product knowledge to a team member::An eesel AI agent answering a question instantly within Slack, demonstrating how it closes the developer support gap.

GitHub vs Bitbucket: A full pricing comparison

Money talks. Here’s how the plans stack up for both platforms.

GitHub pricing

• Free: This plan is great, offering unlimited public and private repos for unlimited collaborators. You also get 2,000 Actions minutes per month.

• Team: At around $4 per user per month, you get more Actions minutes (3,000), more storage, and features like protected branches and code owners.

• Enterprise: For about $21 per user per month, this includes everything in Team plus advanced security features, a huge pool of 50,000 Actions minutes, and more storage.

Bitbucket pricing

• Free: This plan works for up to 5 users and gives you unlimited private repos, but only 50 build minutes per month.

• Standard: At roughly $3.30 per user per month, this plan removes the user limit and bumps you up to 2,500 build minutes.

• Premium: For about $6.60 per user per month, you get everything in Standard, plus 3,500 build minutes, more storage, and security features like IP allowlisting and enforced merge checks.

When you put them side-by-side, GitHub’s free plan is more generous for larger teams and CI/CD, while Bitbucket’s paid plans are a bit more budget-friendly and give you that incredible Jira integration.

This video provides a detailed breakdown of the key differences between GitHub and Bitbucket to help you decide which is right for you.

Which platform is right for you?

After looking at all the details, the choice between GitHub and Bitbucket usually comes down to your team’s DNA.

You should probably choose GitHub if: Your team wants the latest and greatest developer tools, access to a massive integration marketplace, and to be part of a huge community. It’s the default choice for most individual developers, modern tech companies, and anyone who wants powerful features like Copilot and Actions.

You should probably choose Bitbucket if: Your team is already invested in the Atlassian ecosystem, especially Jira. The tight integration gives you a level of project traceability that’s hard to beat. Its pricing is also very appealing, especially for smaller teams who just need private repos without a big price tag.

At the end of the day, your code repository is just one part of a much larger process. It’s great at managing your developer workflow, but don’t forget about all the operational work that happens after the code is merged.

Go beyond code management with eesel AI

Your job isn’t over when a PR gets merged. In fact, that’s often when the real work begins, the questions, bug reports, and support tickets start rolling in.

While GitHub and Bitbucket are amazing for managing code, eesel AI is built to automate the support conversations that happen next. It plugs into your helpdesk and learns from your internal docs to provide instant, correct answers to both your internal teams and your customers.

__IMAGE::https://website-cms.eesel.ai/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/eeselAI-screenshot-Training.png::eeselAI screenshot – Training::A view of the eesel AI dashboard where users can connect various knowledge sources to train the AI agent.

Ready to connect your development work to your support workflow? Try eesel AI for free.