GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

GitLab and Jenkins are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while Jenkins is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.1. GitLab holds a 10.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 88 GitLab reviews

17,371 Views
3,822 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Read 92 Jenkins reviews

3,131 Views
3,068 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

GitLab

Jenkins

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Jenkins and GitLab are leading CI/CD tools. While both platforms have strengths, Jenkins' extensive plugin ecosystem and flexibility often give it an edge for customization, whereas GitLab's streamlined DevOps experience makes it preferable for integrated solutions.

Features: Jenkins excels in providing robust and flexible pipeline capabilities, integrating with a wide array of tools, and offering a vast selection of plugins for customization. Its open-source nature with strong community support adds to its appeal. GitLab is notable for integrating CI/CD within its platform, enhancing the workflow from code to deployment with features like merge request approvals and security options.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins users often seek a more user-friendly interface and better Docker and Kubernetes integration, citing Java's limitations and requesting more documentation and built-in security features. GitLab users express a need for better integration with third-party tools and more beginner-friendly documentation, alongside enhancements in security features and post-deployment monitoring.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins offers flexible deployment options ranging from on-premises to cloud setups but relies on community support for troubleshooting, requiring internal expertise. GitLab simplifies deployment with strong cloud-native capabilities and provides responsive customer support, offering a more consolidated support structure.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins is free for open-source use, known for its cost-effectiveness, while GitLab has a free tier but its premium versions can be costly, especially for larger teams. Despite higher costs, GitLab's feature set and integrated capabilities often justify the expense. Both tools show strong ROI, with Jenkins offering cost savings through open-source deployment and GitLab reducing development cycles and deployment times.

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

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Jenkins

December 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

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (12th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), 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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 10.6%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 8.2%, 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	10.6%
Jenkins	8.2%
Other	81.2%

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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Jamshaid I

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"The CI/CD process is very efficient."

"For us, Gitlab's most valuable feature is the integration with Cypress. We're using Cypress as an automation tool, so we're using GitLab as a tool for running in parallel."

"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."

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

"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."

"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."

"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."

More GitLab pros

"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the ease of use and the information about how to use the features is readily available on the internet. Additionally, with the solution, I can use other reporting tools, such as Flow."

"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."

"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."

"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."

"I like the business logs. It's a very useful tool. Client-server communication is also very fast."

"We used it for all continuous integration parts, like automation testing, deployment, etc."

"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."

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

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."

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

"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."

"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."

"In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents."

"I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira."

"Perhaps the integration could be better."

"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."

More GitLab cons

"It would be better if there were an option to remove its Java dependency. This would make it more compatible with other software, and it could be much better. At present, we have to depend on Java whenever we want to deploy agents."

"Adding support for OIDC and internal user databases simultaneously would improve Jenkins."

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

"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."

"I do not have any notes for improvement."

"I sometimes face a bottleneck when installing the plugins on an offline machine. Mapping the dependencies and then installing the correct sequence of dependencies is a nightmare, and it took me two days to do it."

"Jenkins needs a faster deployment process."

"The documentation could be more friendly, and more examples of how to use it."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"We are using the open-source version."

"Regarding pricing, I would rate GitLab as moderately priced, maybe around a seven or eight out of ten. It could be more flexible for clients but generally offers good value."

"GitLab is cheap."

"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."

"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"The tool is open-source."

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

"It is free."

"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."

"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."

"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."

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

"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

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 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...

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 46% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 8% of the time

SonarQube vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

Bamboo vs GitLab

Compared 2% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 9% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

December 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

December 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

December 2025

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