I’ve been using GitHub for a couple of years now for distributing code, but for about the past 6 months I’ve started using Bitbucket, initially in a collaboration for http://max1284.homelabs.org.uk/. Both services offer similar features but at present neither ticks all the right boxes. Below is my comparison of the two.
Both services offer the basic features you’d want:
- Public repositories
- Use standard Git client tools integrated with favourite dev tools
- Issue tracking
- Wiki
- Revision history
- Forking
Comparison
| GitHub | Bitbucket |
|---|---|
 GitHub screenshot |
 Bitbucket screenshot |
| $7/m for private repositories, couldn’t determine how many though. | Unlimited free private repositories |
| No teams, but any number of collaborators on a repository | Free plan can include team of 5 members |
| Community backed, but uses a .com domain! | Corporate backed but uses a .org domain! |
| GitHub pages for documentation as well as wiki | Wiki only |
| Mobile App | Not Yet? Although mobile Git clients could be used |
| Doesn’t appear to be an import option | Can import repositories from GitHub, but just latest version, no history retrieved. |
| New features added on regular basis | New features arrive less frequently |
| Supports Git | Supports Git and Mercurial |
| Can use own domain e.g. code.thiseldo.co.uk |
Conclusions
At present I’m tending towards Bitbucket mainly because of the free private repositories that will enable code to be kept private if it is work for a customer or before it is released to a wider audience. As a result I’ve started to move a number of my repositories from GitHub to Bitbucket. I’m also re-pointing the Git origin for my local repositories so that they can push to Bitbucket instead of GitHub.
The opinions and views expressed here are my own.
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