Develocity accelerates and observes JVM builds in depth. Nx covers the whole monorepo, JS/TS, JVM, and more, with one graph, one cache, and task-level distribution.
What is Nx?
Section titled “What is Nx?”Nx is a monorepo platform: a task-running CLI, remote caching, distributed CI across machines, e2e test splitting, flaky-task handling, self-healing CI, and editor integration. It layers onto whatever CI provider you already run.
What is Develocity?
Section titled “What is Develocity?”Develocity, formerly Gradle Enterprise, is a mature build acceleration and observability platform for the JVM ecosystem: build caching for Gradle and Maven, test distribution, ML-based test selection, and deep per-build forensics through Build Scan.
Quick takeaway
Section titled “Quick takeaway”Develocity and Nx pull in different directions:
- Develocity goes deep on the JVM. Build cache, test distribution, and ML-based test selection for Gradle and Maven, with deep Build Scan introspection. It observes JS builds without caching or distributing them.
- Nx goes wide across the repository. One graph across JavaScript, JVM, .NET, and more, caching, pruning, and distributing every task in it.
For a polyglot repository the choice is deep on one language or wide across all of them.
| Topic | Nx Cloud | Develocity |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | One graph across JS/TS, JVM, .NET, and more | Gradle, Maven, Bazel, sbt (npm observed, not accelerated) |
| Build caching | Every cacheable task in the workspace | Gradle, Maven, Bazel, and sbt builds |
| Test selection | Deterministic nx affected at project level, all languages | ML-based Predictive Test Selection, Gradle and Maven only |
| Distribution | Any task type across dynamically balanced agents | JVM test executions on JUnit Platform |
| E2E splitting | Atomizer splits Playwright/Cypress suites per file | Not available |
| Flaky tests | Detection and isolated re-runs | Detection, retries, and org-wide trends |
| AI integration | Self-healing CI proposes and verifies fixes | MCP servers and failure grouping provide context |
| Adoption and pricing | Self-serve, public pricing, free tier, single-tenant option | Per-committer enterprise contracts, mature on-prem story |
The Develocity compatibility matrix draws the boundary: Build Scan, caching, test distribution, and Predictive Test Selection are available for Gradle and Maven, with scans and caching for Bazel and sbt. Its npm agent captures Build Scans, test insights, and failure analytics for JS builds, but the compatibility matrix lists no build caching, distribution, or test selection for npm. There is no repository-level project graph. Agents wrap individual build invocations.
Nx starts from the repository. The @nx/gradle plugin puts Gradle projects in the same graph as your JS/TS projects, alongside plugins for Maven, .NET, and community plugins for Python, Rust, and Go. Every Nx Cloud feature below applies to that whole graph.
Build caching
Section titled “Build caching”Develocity's build cache for Gradle and Maven is mature and fine-grained, caching at the task and goal level inside a build. They built the original Gradle build cache, and it shows.
Nx Replay applies the same idea to every cacheable task in the workspace: JS builds, tests, lint runs, Gradle tasks orchestrated through Nx, and anything else with declared inputs and outputs, shared across all developers and CI with enforced branch-scoped isolation.
Test selection
Section titled “Test selection”Predictive Test Selection is a Develocity capability with no Nx equivalent: an ML model trained on your build history scores individual test classes and skips ones unlikely to fail, with selectable risk profiles. The trade-off is scope and determinism. PTS covers Gradle and Maven tests only, and as a probabilistic model it can skip a test that would have failed.
nx affected is deterministic: it computes which projects a change can reach through the graph and skips everything else, for every task type in every language. Nothing reachable is skipped, and nothing unreachable runs.
Distribution
Section titled “Distribution”Develocity Test Distribution fans JVM test executions out to remote agents, with partitioning based on historical timing. It requires tests on the JUnit Platform and covers Gradle test tasks and Maven Surefire/Failsafe goals. Compilation, linting, packaging, and non-JVM work stay on the build machine.
Nx Agents distribute any task in the graph, builds, tests, lint, e2e, and Docker included, across machines that balance dynamically from timing history.
E2E splitting
Section titled “E2E splitting”Develocity has no support for JS e2e runners. Atomizer splits Playwright and Cypress suites into per-file tasks so the slowest suites spread across agents instead of serializing a pipeline.
Flaky tests
Section titled “Flaky tests”Develocity's flaky test management runs deep: detection across Gradle, Maven, Bazel, and npm builds, retry integration, and org-wide flakiness trends.
Nx Cloud detects flaky tasks from execution history and re-runs them in isolation automatically, covering every task type, so a flaky Playwright spec is handled the same way as a flaky JUnit class.
AI integration
Section titled “AI integration”Develocity's 2026 AI direction is context: MCP servers that let coding agents query build history, AI-powered failure grouping, and failure classification skills, all of which give agents context rather than fixing failures themselves.
Nx Cloud's self-healing CI acts: it analyzes the failed task, proposes a fix, verifies it, and surfaces it on the PR. Nx also ships an MCP server and agent skills for local coding agents.
Adoption and pricing
Section titled “Adoption and pricing”Develocity is sold per committer on annual enterprise contracts with no public pricing, deployed SaaS, hybrid, bring-your-own-cloud, or self-hosted. Its on-prem and air-gapped story is long-established.
Nx Cloud has public pricing with a free tier and self-serve signup, and single-tenant hosted or on-prem options for enterprises.
Who should pick which
Section titled “Who should pick which”Nx fits when any of these apply:
- Your repository spans more than the JVM, mixing JavaScript, .NET, or other languages with Gradle or Maven.
- You want affected detection, e2e splitting, and self-healing CI across every task type.
- You want self-serve adoption and a free tier rather than an enterprise sales cycle.
Develocity fits only when:
- Your codebase is purely Gradle or Maven with large JVM test suites.
- You need ML-based Predictive Test Selection or deep JVM build forensics.
- A strict on-prem or air-gapped deployment is a hard requirement.
For a polyglot repository, Nx covers the whole graph in one platform rather than splitting tooling by language.