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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
91
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

"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."
"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."
"The solution's most valuable features are pipelines."
"It is a speedy platform compared to the others I have used. I have also enjoyed using the platform as this solution offers a good user experience."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"Jenkins is very stable."
"Automation of chores like deployment, frequent manual tasks (like running scripts on test and production systems) reduced the time used and the number of errors made by engineers, freeing them to do meaningful work instead."
"GitHub linking is pretty good. We have a deployment application where we can run our tests and add various variables to be passed as assertions to those tests. This is pretty fluid with Jenkins."
"It's very useful when you want to automate different processes from beginning to end."
"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."
"Having builds and test tasks triggered on commit helps not to break the product."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
 

Cons

"There are missing search features, particularly when searching repositories or applying filters. Additionally, I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing with variable environments."
"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"Reporting could be improved."
"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."
"I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira."
"GitLab could improve the patch repository. It does not have support for Conan patch version regions. Additionally, better support for Kubernetes deployment is needed as part of the package."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain."
"The upgrades need improvement."
"The documentation on plugin development could be better: more examples. ​"
"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."
"Jenkins is an old product, and we encounter performance issues and slow response. Also, some of the plugins are not stable."
"Upgrading and maintaining plugins can be painful, as sometimes upgrading a plugin can break functionality of another plugin that a job is dependent on."
"The user interface could be improved, and its reporting capabilities need enhancement. The plugins could be more effective."
"Better and easy-to-use integration with Docker would be an 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"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."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"The tool is open-source."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"Jenkins is an open-source tool."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
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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
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
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?
The setup cost was moderate and not very high. For GitLab SaaS, the initial setup cost was minimal, while self-managed GitLab involved infrastructure, VM storage backups, runner configuration, and ...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain. YAML syntax is strict, and errors are easy to make, while debugging pipeline logic ca...
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.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.