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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

"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."
"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"The initial setup of GitLab is pretty simple, with no complications."
"GitLab is very well-organized and easy to use. Also, it offers most features that customers need."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are ease of use and highly intuitive UI and performance."
"Jenkins is very customizable."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration of automatic scripts for testing and the user's ability to use any script."
"Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes."
"We are using the open-source version and there is a lot of plugins and features that are available and it works on agents for free. In other solutions, it will cost extra to use them with the agent."
"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."
"There are a large number of plugins available for integration with third party systems."
"Different types of jobs, such as Pipeline, Build, Freestyle, Maven, etc."
 

Cons

"GitLab could improve by having more plugins and better user-friendliness."
"I don't really like the new Kubernetes integration because it is pretty focused on the on-premise environment, but we're in a hybrid environment."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."
"I would like to have some features to support peer review."
"Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does."
"We would like to have easier tutorials. Their tutorials are too technical for a user to understand. They should be more detailed but less technical."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"The product should provide more visualization as to how many pipelines are performing and how many builds are happening. It should also integrate with Kubernetes and OpenShift."
"The solution could improve by having more advanced integrations."
"Jenkins should adopt the Pipeline as Code approach by building a deployment pipeline using the Jenkins file."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
"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."
"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."
"And I don't care too much for the Jenkins user interface. It's not that user-friendly compared to other solutions available right now. It's not a great user experience. You can do just fine if you are a techie, but it would take a novice some time to learn it and get things done."
"The enterprise version is less stable than the open-source version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"The solution is open source."
"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
"It is an open source."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"There is no cost. It 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
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.
881,282 professionals have used our research since 2012.