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GNU Make vs Jenkins comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

GNU Make
Ranking in Build Automation
17th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
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 June 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.1%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins9.1%
GNU Make1.9%
Other89.0%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

JC
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Enhances productivity with efficient dependency handling and a straightforward setup
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for tasks like compiling C++ code. In the industry, AI developers, for example, use GNU Make in their work…
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

"Makefiles are extremely easy to work with using any preferred editor. GNU Make can be run directly from the terminal, not requiring any time wasted on clicking."
"I think this product has all you need."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"Full-featured syntax allows building strategies as simple or as complex as one wishes, and declarative approach fits the task really well. Wide adoption also means that everybody knows what GNU Make is and how to use it."
"GNU Make is such an essential tool that it is almost impossible to imagine working without it. Not having it, developers would probably have to resort to doing everything manually or via shell scripts."
"GNU make is a build automation utility for running builds on various Linux flavored platforms."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"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."
"The performance is fine, and with the huge chunk of connectors that it has, you can literally connect to anything and add anything in the pipeline, with connector parts seamlessly able to integrate into different products and systems."
"I am not aware of the available options in the market right now compared to Jenkins, but I am pretty much happy with the service that Jenkins is providing our company."
"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."
"The deploying and assessing of the development of our code and our application has been really useful, it's getting a bit easier for us to use Jenkins, and it is really helping us."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
"Jenkins Job DSL plugin was a game changer for me personally."
"It has a lot of community posts and support."
 

Cons

"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output. A wrapper named colormake exists to work around this, but native (opt-in) support would be welcome."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"GNU make is a bad candidate for builds that require incremental builds often, as it does not support this feature."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output."
"GNU Make requires using the Tab symbol as the first symbol of command line for execution. In some text editors this can be problematic, as they automatically insert spaces instead of tabs."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"Support should be provided at no cost, as there is no free support available for any of the free versions."
"With few plugins, like Monitoring, it crashes."
"I'd like to see some more features for scriptwriting and a more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines."
"This solution could be improved by removing the storage of unnecessary data such as the history of test deployments that were unsuccessful."
"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 upgrades need improvement."
"Adding support for OIDC and internal user databases simultaneously would improve Jenkins."
"Jenkins could improve by adding the ability to edit test automation and make time planning better because it is difficult. It should be easier to do."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."
"GNU Make is free and open source software."
"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 an open-source tool."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"Jenkins is a free solution, 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."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GNU Make?
GNU Make is a free solution that comes with Linux, which positively impacts operational costs by eliminating licensing fees.
What needs improvement with GNU Make?
I am not familiar enough with it to suggest any specific new features or areas for improvement. It occupies its niche well.
What is your primary use case for GNU Make?
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for task...
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 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.
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
I do not have any notes for improvement.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox
Find out what your peers are saying about GNU Make vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.