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GitLab vs Jenkins vs Travis CI 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 16.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 10.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.
GitLab
Read 82 GitLab reviews
  • 6,080 Views
  • 4,974 Comparison Views
97% willing to recommend
Jenkins
Read 93 Jenkins reviews
  • 4,156 Views
  • 3,557 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
Travis CI
Read 2 Travis CI reviews
  • 428 Views
  • 410 Comparison Views
0% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between GitLab, Jenkins, and Travis CI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, Jenkins and others in Build Automation.

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Build Automation
April 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:
 

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. The mindshare of Travis CI is 0.7%, down from 1.8% 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.
Read full review
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.
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Pravar Agrawal - PeerSpot reviewer
YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.
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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 code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"In our software development lifecycle, GitLab is used as a component for code repository management. We use GitLab for several projects to handle code repositories. For other software projects, we use Bitbucket, but the use case for both is very similar."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"It is scalable."
"We use GitLab in the new project for CI/CD, integration, and deployment."
"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."
"Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective."
"The solution's most valuable features are pipelines."
More GitLab pros
"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."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"The solution is scalable and concurrent users have access to the platform."
"Jenkins is very stable."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."
"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."
"We significantly reduced build times of large projects (more than 80k lines of Scala code) using build time on Jenkins as a time sample. It reduced the developer write-test-commit cycle time, and increased productivity."
"It is open source, flexible, scalable, and easy to use. It is easy to maintain for the administrator. It is a continuous integration tool, and its enterprise version is quite mature. It has good integrations and plug-ins. Azure DevOps can also be integrated with Jenkins."
More Jenkins pros
"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."
 

Cons

"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."
"I would like to have some features to support peer review."
"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
"The pricing model of GitLab is an issue for me."
"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."
More GitLab cons
"The disadvantage of Jenkins is writing Groovy scripts. There are other CI tools where you do not need to write this many scripts to manage and deploy."
"For this solution to be a 10, it has to be a lot more stable. Maybe the public version of Jenkins is stable, but in our case it's not stable."
"The enterprise version is less stable than the open-source version."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"We would like to see the addition of mobile simulators support to this solution, as part of its open-source offering. We currently have to carry out manual testing for these platforms."
"Creating a new SonarQube project requires a separate job, and we've encountered some integration issues with Docker and the need for better vulnerability checks."
"Its schedule builds need improvement. It should have scheduling features in the platform rather than using external plug-ins."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an Artifactory (Universal artifact repository manager)."
More Jenkins cons
"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"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."
"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
More GitLab pricing and cost advice
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
"This is an open-source solution for the basic features. However, if an organization wishes to include specific functionality, outside of the basic package, there are extra costs involved."
"It is an open source."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"It is a cheap solution."
More Jenkins pricing and cost advice
Information not available
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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…
Read full review
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 provi...
See all answers
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.
See all answers
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 ...
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 requi...
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 pro...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?
I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Travis CI?
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere ...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Travis CI?
Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis wor...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab Logo
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab
Compared 8% of the time
AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab Logo
AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab
Compared 6% of the time
Fortify Static Code Analyzer vs GitLab Logo
Fortify Static Code Analyzer vs GitLab
Compared 2% of the time
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Harness vs Jenkins Logo
Harness vs Jenkins
Compared 14% of the time
Bazel vs Jenkins Logo
Bazel vs Jenkins
Compared 9% of the time
Bamboo vs Jenkins Logo
Bamboo vs Jenkins
Compared 9% of the time
Tekton vs Jenkins Logo
Tekton vs Jenkins
Compared 8% of the time
AWS CodePipeline vs Jenkins Logo
AWS CodePipeline vs Jenkins
Compared 6% of the time
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Tekton vs Travis CI Logo
Tekton vs Travis CI
Compared 100% of the time
More Travis CI Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
GitLab
April 2025
GitLab reportDownload GitLab product report
Buyer's Guide
Jenkins
April 2025
Jenkins reportDownload Jenkins product report
Buyer's Guide
Build Automation
April 2025
Travis CI reportDownload Travis CI product report
 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
No data available
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
Easily sync your GitHub projects with Travis CI and you'll be testing your code in minutes. Travis CI for private repositories has plans for every size project. With Travis CI testing your open source project is 100% free.
Travis CI
 

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
Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails
Buyer's Guide
Build Automation
April 2025
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