Bitbucket
Ranked 9 of 22 Git forges by recommenders
Recommended for its clean UI, reliability, and seamless Jira and Confluence integration. Common caveat: critics call it slow, outage-prone, and neglected since dropping Mercurial.
Recommended for its clean UI, reliability, and seamless Jira and Confluence integration. Common caveat: critics call it slow, outage-prone, and neglected since dropping Mercurial.
92 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 37
- criticize it
- 55
- approval share
- 40%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 37 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Good Mercurial support
“BitBucket, at the time, gave Github a good run for their money and had great Mercurial support and was what I preferred.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub” “I miss Bitbucket's mercurial offering.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives” “Loved Bitbucket's Mercurial offering.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives” Seamless Jira and Confluence integration
“if you already use Jira or Confluence, integration is seamless”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Alternatives?” “I ran our on-prem Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc etc.”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “How to disable or avoid intrusive AI” “simply made diligent use of the full Atlassian suite”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “How do you capture WHY engineering decisions were made, not just what?” Clean, simple UI
“I really thought it was _fine_ from a user perspective”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst” “I find the UI incredibly simple and clear”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “GitHub Is Sinking” “it's been really awesome and clean”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub” Reliable with no problems
“bitbucket has never given us problems with several of our team using Firefox”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “GitHub appears to be struggling with measly three nines availability” “Im using Bitbucket for years with no issues.”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Is Down” “it did its job, it didn’t break for me”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Before GitHub”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow performance
“Bitbucket is okay to use, the main problem like with every Atlassian product is that it is dog slow.”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Atlassian to cut roughly 1,600 jobs in pivot to AI” “Bitbucket managed to be slow, annoying, and suffer more outages than github ever did.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement” Outages and slow status updates
“Love paying a premium for Bitbucket just to have their AI support insist everything’s fine—while every page except the status one is melting down.”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Bitbucket Is Offline” “It took an hour for them to update the status page at all to mention there's something wrong”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Bitbucket Is Offline” “Bitbucket managed to be slow, annoying, and suffer more outages than github ever did.”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement” Dropped Mercurial support
“Atlassian acquired Bitbucket and let its Mercurial support wither and die.”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Will agents like Git any more than we do?” “I was pretty happy with Bitbucket before they dropped Mercurial support”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “The Forge We Deserve” Seen as neglected, losing ground
“Bitbucket is a neglected product that has lost ground to GitHub and GitLab.”
Comment from 12 Mar 2026 in “Atlassian to cut roughly 1,600 jobs in pivot to AI” “I don't think they can pretend that switching to git did very much for them”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control”
Other Git forges people recommend
The four most recommended other Git forges, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 22 Git forges, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 102 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it was still worse than GitHub”
“There are random little things I like about it better than GitHub, especially in an enterprise setting.”
“they just removed the issue tracker and forced us over to Jira”
“I ran our on-prem Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc etc.”
“it's been really awesome and clean”
“Bitbucket was the perfect alternative.”
“it's my favorite git management system I've used for real production work and it allows for self hosting”
“found it very easy to use with a similar offering as github”
“Rather use BitBucket or GitLab really”
“Bitbucket managed to be slow, annoying, and suffer more outages than github ever did.”
“Loved Bitbucket's Mercurial offering.”
“I miss Bitbucket's mercurial offering.”
“I was pretty happy with Bitbucket before they dropped Mercurial support”
“Atlassian acquired Bitbucket and let its Mercurial support wither and die.”
“Jira/Bitbucket are nice by comparison now (imo).”
“I find the UI incredibly simple and clear”
“Pre-llm: GitLab, BitBucket, Gitea, Source Hut, etc.”
“I don't think they can pretend that switching to git did very much for them”
“otherwise it was better to use”
“BitBucket, at the time, gave Github a good run for their money and had great Mercurial support and was what I preferred.”
“it did its job, it didn’t break for me”
“I used to use bitbucket a ton back then. I loved it.”
“if you already use Jira or Confluence, integration is seamless”
“isn't the worst but it has quite a few problems”
“Jira and Bitbucket have drastically improved performance and reliability over this same time period.”
“bitbucket has never given us problems with several of our team using Firefox”
“Owned by companies that do not help the US Federal Government illegally spy on their own citizens and murder children overseas”
“simply made diligent use of the full Atlassian suite”
“it's a very hard sell in a world where GitLab and webhooks exist”
“Bitbucket is a neglected product that has lost ground to GitHub and GitLab.”
“Bitbucket is okay to use, the main problem like with every Atlassian product is that it is dog slow.”
“I remember it being "not that bad".”
“never felt like anything more than a tool that did the job, but now I really miss it”
“Im using Bitbucket for years with no issues.”
“it's 100% optional, so I'm sticking with that for the moment”
“I really thought it was _fine_ from a user perspective”
“Bitbucket was totally nice”
“not using standard tools like Bitbucket for example sends a message to me that you are a maverick”
“Love paying a premium for Bitbucket just to have their AI support insist everything’s fine—while every page except the status one is melting down.”
“It took an hour for them to update the status page at all to mention there's something wrong”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.