GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

GitLab and Jenkins are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Jenkins is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. GitLab holds a 12.2% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 9.1% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 87 GitLab reviews

18,203 Views
4,187 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Read 92 Jenkins reviews

3,400 Views
3,332 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

GitLab

Jenkins

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

Jenkins and GitLab both compete in the CI/CD tools category. Jenkins holds an advantage due to its vast library of plugins and strong community support, while GitLab offers an integrated platform with robust security features.

Features: Jenkins is celebrated for its extensive plugin ecosystem that allows for significant flexibility and customization. It provides a wide array of plugins for automating complex tasks across different platforms. GitLab combines source control and CI/CD in one platform, providing a seamless experience with strong security measures. It includes built-in tools that support comprehensive DevOps processes.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins users seek improvements in its outdated interface and plugin stability. Enhancing cloud features and integration capabilities is also desired. GitLab could improve tool integration, expand documentation, and enhance UI for easier navigation. Users would appreciate more flexibility in pipeline configurations and stronger security features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins offers versatile deployment options across on-premises, public, and private cloud environments, with strong community support. GitLab matches this versatility but provides more structured support options, which are beneficial for enterprises needing dedicated assistance. Both have supportive communities, with GitLab often commended for its support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins is primarily open-source and free, with an enterprise version offering additional features at a cost, making it cost-effective for companies avoiding proprietary tools. GitLab operates on a tiered pricing model with a free community edition. Though its premium tiers are costlier, they are appealing for enterprise needs due to their abundant features. Both provide good value, with Jenkins leading in cost efficiency due to its open-source nature.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Jenkins

September 2025

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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

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (3rd), DevSecOps (1st)

Jenkins

Ranking in Build Automation

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 12.2%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	12.2%
Jenkins	9.1%
Other	78.7%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.

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Annamalai Pts

DevOps Engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

Streamlined CI/CD pipelines with powerful integration and an easy setup

I use Jenkins as a CI/CD tool. We create pipelines using Jenkins, with stages for Maven builds, Docker image builds, SonarQube integration, and deploying the image to a Kubernetes cluster, AWS EKS Jenkins has made the developers' work very easy. They commit to the remote repository, and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its convenience. I am able to trace back most of my changes up to a far distance in time and it helps me to analyze and see the older version of the code."

"When a developer checks in code, it is automatically built and deployed, and automated test cases are also run. We have extensive integration with GitLab, which helps us with source code management. We run the static code analysis using SonarQube."

"Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what; this is the best feature which is useful for all companies."

"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."

"CI/CD is very good. The version control system is also good. These are the two features that we use."

"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."

"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."

More GitLab pros

"Jenkins is very user-friendly."

"The most valuable aspect of Jenkins is pipeline customization. Jenkins provides a declarative pipeline as well as a scripted pipeline. The scripted pipeline uses a programming language. You can customize it to your needs, so we use Jenkins because other solutions like Travis and Spinnaker don't allow much customization."

"When we have manual tasks, we have to depend on multiple technical teams. With Jenkins, we can bring all the technologies together by the click of a button. We can see results without having to depend on different teams. Jenkins makes life easy for the database and DevOps teams."

"Different types of jobs, such as Pipeline, Build, Freestyle, Maven, etc."

"There are a large number of plugins available for integration with third party systems."

"Jenkins has excellent task planning features."

"It's a powerful tool for CI/CD."

"Jenkins integrates with multiple tools like Bitbucket and makes life easier. We don't have to write a lot of code since a lot of libraries are available."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."

"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."

"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."

"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"It can be free for commercial use."

"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."

"The solution could be faster."

"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."

More GitLab cons

"The disadvantage of Jenkins is writing Groovy scripts. There are other CI tools where you do not need to write this many scripts to manage and deploy."

"The user interface could be updated a little."

"They need to improve their documentation."

"I would like to have an integrated dashboard on top of it and a better UX to look at. The dashboard could be better in terms of integration with other tools. We should be able to have a single pane of glass across all the tools that we use where Jenkins is the pipeline. This can be a very good upgrade to it."

"Jenkins could improve by allowing more scripting languages. We need to use Groovy scripting and it is difficult to debug and it is not ideal for creating file scripts. We tried to search for assistance but we did not find much help."

"The learning curve is quite steep at the moment."

"The onboarding of Jenkins should be smoother, and it should have more pipelines available as it's deployed on many different servers."

"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of GitLab."

"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."

"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."

"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."

"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."

"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."

"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."

"Jenkins is open source."

"The pricing for Jenkins is free."

"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user184734

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	42

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?

We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient. Security-wise, we have security features enabled in GitLab fo...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Jenkins?

Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 39% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 11% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

Bamboo vs GitLab

Compared 2% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 13% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 9% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

October 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

October 2025

Download Jenkins product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab offers a secure and user-friendly platform for CI/CD pipeline management, code repository control, and collaboration, enhancing development speed and efficiency. It facilitates automation with extensive customization and tool integration, ideal for DevOps processes.

GitLab supports source code management, version control, and collaborative development. It's frequently used in CI/CD processes to automate builds and deployments while integrating DevOps practices. GitLab allows companies to manage repositories, automate pipelines, conduct code reviews, and maintain development lifecycles. The platform supports infrastructure and configuration management, enabling efficient code collaboration, deployment automation, and comprehensive repository handling. Many organizations commit and deploy developed code using GitLab's capabilities.

What are GitLab's most valuable features?

CI/CD Pipeline Management: Streamlines development through automated testing and deployment.
User-Friendly Interface: Ensures ease of collaboration and task automation.
Code Merging and Branching: Facilitates smooth code integration and version control.
Security Platform: Provides strong security features for safe development.
Tool Integration: Enhances functionality with diverse tool integration.

What benefits should users evaluate?

Development Speed: Accelerates processes through automation.
Collaboration Ease: Simplifies team interactions and workflow.
Customization Options: Offers extensive personalization for specific needs.
Comprehensive Documentation: Provides detailed guidance for users.
Secure Platform: Maintains integrity with robust security features.

In specific industries, GitLab serves as a backbone for source code management and CI/CD implementation. Companies leverage its capabilities for infrastructure management and deployment automation, thus streamlining project delivery timelines. Its ability to handle configuration management and code repositories effectively aids in maintaining development lifecycles, making it a preferred choice for organizations committed to enhancing their DevOps practices.

GitLab

Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.

Jenkins

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

Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Jenkins

September 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Jenkins

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