We study bounded actions of groups and semigroups on exact sequences of Banach spaces, characterizing different type of actions in terms of commutator estimates satisfied by the quasi-linear map associated to the exact sequence. As a special and important case, actions on interpolation scales are related to actions on the exact sequence induced by the scale through the Rochberg-Weiss theory [30]. Consequences are presented in the cases of certain non-unitarizable triangular representations of the group F ∞ on the Hilbert space, of the compatibility of complex structures on twisted sums, as well as of bounded actions on the interpolation scale of L p -spaces. As a new fundamental example, the isometry group of L p (0, 1), p = 2 is shown to extend as an isometry group acting on the associated Kalton-Peck space Z p [23]. Finally we define the concept of G-splitting for exact sequences admitting the action of a semigroup G, and give criteria and examples to relate G-splitting and usual splitting of exact sequences: while both are equivalent for amenable groups and, for example, reflexive spaces, counterexamples are provided for the group F ∞ as well as for the space c 0 .