GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

GitLab and Jenkins are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while Jenkins is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. GitLab holds a 15.0% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 10.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 85 GitLab reviews

20,902 Views
5,016 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Read 93 Jenkins reviews

3,699 Views
3,625 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

GitLab

Jenkins

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Jenkins and GitLab compete in the CI/CD automation domain. Based on feature richness and value clarity, Jenkins holds the upper hand due to its versatile plugin ecosystem offering extensive customization.

Features: Jenkins is known for its extensive plugin ecosystem, allowing for seamless automation. Its open-source nature and strong community support enable a range of customization through plugins and Groovy scripting. Jenkins excels at continuous integration and deployment, making it vital for managing complex delivery pipelines. GitLab offers robust CI/CD capabilities with seamless tool integration, a user-friendly interface simplifying collaboration and deployments, and comprehensive version control and DevOps features appealing to organizations seeking a unified platform.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins users highlight the need for an updated interface and stability improvements for lesser-used plugins. The installation process requires enhancements to streamline plugin dependencies and expand out-of-the-box features. GitLab, despite its Kubernetes integration, needs better AWS support, enhanced leadership metrics, and reporting features. Users of GitLab's community edition seek improved security and integration with third-party applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins is primarily used for on-premises installations, heavily relying on its large open-source user base for community support. GitLab is community-driven but provides more structured user experiences suitable for hybrid cloud environments along with formal support channels in paid tiers.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins, being open-source, offers significant cost savings ideal for teams using its extensive plugins without high licensing costs, making it appealing to budget-conscious organizations. GitLab provides free and paid versions, with its Premium and Ultimate tiers offering advanced support and features that are justified by larger enterprises but challenging for smaller teams due to cost concerns.

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

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Jenkins

July 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

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (10th), 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 (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)

Jenkins

Ranking in Build Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 15.0%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.5%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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 ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) 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 best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish."

"A user friendly solution."

"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."

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

"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."

"If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines."

"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."

"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."

More GitLab pros

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

"It is a stable solution."

"Jenkins allows us to automate deployment, so I no longer have to do it manually. That's the primary use case. The other advantage of Jenkins is that it's open source. It was free for me to download and install. It's a product that's been in use for many years, so I can find a lot of support online for any issues that I may encounter while configuring anything for a given use case."

"The solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."

"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."

"The most valuable feature of Jenkins is its open source."

"Jenkins' most valuable feature is Pipeline."

"Very easy to understand for newcomers."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."

"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."

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

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

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

"Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does."

"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."

"Even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still."

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."

"We need more licensed product integrations."

"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."

"The UI of Jenkins could improve."

"Jenkins can sometimes run slow, especially when restarting after a plugin installation or when returning from a pipeline view to the dashboard."

"Jenkins can be improved, but it's difficult for me to explain. The initial setup could be more straightforward. If you connect Jenkins with bookings and lockouts, it can be challenging."

"I do not have any notes for improvement."

"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an Artifactory (Universal artifact repository manager)."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

"We are using the open-source version."

"We are using the free version of GitLab."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

"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."

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

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The solution is open source."

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

"Jenkins is open source and free."

"It is a free product."

"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."

"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."

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

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?

The pricing and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.

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 26% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 15% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Veracode vs GitLab

Compared 2% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 17% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 9% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

Bamboo vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

July 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

July 2025

Download Jenkins product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

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

July 2025

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