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GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (9th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 9.6%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.5%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitLab9.6%
Jenkins7.5%
Other82.9%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Role-based workflows have transformed daily deployments and improve team collaboration
GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process. The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps. The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly. For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities. GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother. Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.
JI
Principal Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Efficient resource allocation and robust workflow with autoscaling capabilities
In Kubernetes, we use node-based architecture with nodes and pods and follow practices like RBAC and rollback. Multiple pods can run concurrently. We benefit from Kubernetes' ability to autoscale pods and use horizontal pod autoscalers to adjust the number of pods based on metrics like CPU or memory usage, ensuring efficient resource allocation and stability under load.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It scales well."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."
"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."
"I have had no problem with the stability of the solution."
"Git hosting has an integration with ACD which is why we liked this solution in the first place."
"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."
"The stability is good."
"A user friendly solution."
"The solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."
"I can install Jenkins for integration from multiple developers and automate application delivery, staging, and production environments."
"We have started to integrate Pipelines as a part of a build, and built a library of common functions. It simplified and made our build scripts more readable."
"Jenkins has excellent task planning features."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to connect with different tools and technologies."
"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."
"We use Jenkins to automatically build Python binaries into several OS's i.e. OS X, Ubuntu, Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit."
"I love Jenkins. I like that you work on anything, and you make anything. Jenkins is very important for my team. I am satisfied with the product."
 

Cons

"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"I believe GitLab can be improved by making integration with other platforms a little easier."
"GitLab would be improved with the addition of templates for deployment on local PCs."
"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."
"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."
"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."
"Adding support for OIDC and internal user databases simultaneously would improve Jenkins."
"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."
"Logging could be improved to offer a clearer view."
"Jenkins should adopt the Pipeline as Code approach by building a deployment pipeline using the Jenkins file."
"There are some issues with Jenkins, especially with the SIP job."
"We sometimes face challenges during version upgrades, such as failures when migrating Kubernetes versions."
"It could be cheaper."
"The onboarding of Jenkins should be smoother, and it should have more pipelines available as it's deployed on many different servers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"This is an open-source solution."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"It is an open source."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."
"The solution is open source."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
"The tool is open-source."
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at Facebook
Jan 22, 2015
I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.
Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise45
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
GitLab can be improved by being more responsive in the UI and offering better pricing for premium features, which would be useful for small startups. While GitLab's CI/CD is powerful, it is somewha...
How does Tekton compare with Jenkins?
When you are evaluating tools for automating your own GitOps-based CI/CD workflow, it is important to keep your requirements and use cases in mind. Tekton deployment is complex and it is not very e...
What do you like most about Jenkins?
Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jenkins?
Jenkins is used in many companies to save money, especially within R&D divisions, by avoiding the expenses of proprietary tools.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
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Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,986 professionals have used our research since 2012.