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GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 16.6%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.4%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.
Dinesh-Patil - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly-scalable and stable solution that reduces deployment time and produces a significant return on investment
The dashboard needs to be improved. Though the access management and authentication functionalities are present, the dashboard and UI could be more user-friendly. The product has many plug-ins. Users have to go through the documentation to be able to use the product. The UI must be more user-friendly. The information should be available in the dashboard itself. The users shouldn’t have to refer to the documentation. When a user hovers over the elements on the dashboard, it should reveal information about them.

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 security."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"The stability of GitLab is impressive."
"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."
"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."
"They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"Has enabled full automation of the company."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
"Jenkins' most valuable feature is Pipeline."
"Jenkins can be used for elastic management, if you have any sensitive data or credentials you can use them across the environment. Additionally, the solution is easy to use and can be used across multiple use cases."
"This is a great integration tool and very powerful."
"It has a lot of community posts and support."
"Configuration management: It is so easy to configure a Jenkins instance. Migrate configuration to a new environment just by copying XML files and setting up new nodes."
"The auto-schedule feature is valuable. Another valuable feature is that Jenkins does not trigger a build when there is no change in any of the systems. Jenkins also supports most of the open-source plug-ins."
 

Cons

"The user interface could be more user-friendly. We do most of our operations through the website interface but it could be better."
"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."
"The documentation is confusing."
"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."
"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."
"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"I would like to see AI support in GitLab."
"Partition security for the workflow of projects is not yet an option."
"Jenkins could simplify the user interface a little bit because it sometimes creates too many features cramped in the UI."
"Performance-wise. This needs to be improved. Not only performance-wise, some functionality or some features can be added to Jenkins."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an Artifactory (Universal artifact repository manager)."
"It would be helpful if they had a bit more interactive UI."
"The UI must be more user-friendly."
"Some kind of SaaS product would be helpful in providing organizational structure."
"I think an integrated help button, that respected the context of the change/work in hand, would be a worthwhile improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."
"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."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"We are using the open-source version."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"The solution is open source."
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"It is a cheap solution."
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Educational Organization
26%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLa...
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: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.