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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
16th
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
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 February 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.2%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jenkins7.2%
GNU Make1.7%
Other91.1%
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…
AllenUmlas - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at Etisalat
Streamlines the CI/CD process with its user-friendly interface, extensive plugin ecosystem and efficient automation capabilities
Jenkins is incredibly user-friendly, so I haven't encountered any difficulties using it. It's the only product I've used for automation, but I find it to be very intuitive and effective. Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes. We're leveraging Jenkins to automate tasks related to Telco, particularly in upgrading the manual orchestration. It's a critical tool for streamlining our operations.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"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 have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
"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."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are its ease of use and good plugins available. You are able to connect to a lot of solutions."
"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."
"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."
"Has a good interface, is reliable and saves time."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"Jenkins is a very mature product."
"We used it for all continuous integration parts, like automation testing, deployment, etc."
"Distributed execution of build and test jobs."
 

Cons

"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."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"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."
"Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management. This needs improvement."
"A more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines would be helpful."
"The learning curve is quite steep at the moment."
"Adding support for OIDC and internal user databases simultaneously would improve Jenkins."
"Sometimes, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."
"Jenkins is an open-source solution, and people tend to stay on the same version for a long time. When you look for an answer on Google, you often find something that doesn't relate to your implementation. The plugins are both the aspect of Jenkins and also one of the worst because the plugins can have different versions, so it's hard to figure out how to solve the problems."
"Jenkins needs a faster deployment process."
"They need to improve their documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GNU Make is free and open source software."
"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."
"Jenkins is an open-source tool."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
"It is a free product."
"It is an open source."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"The tool is open-source."
"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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise57
 

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 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

 

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: February 2026.
882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.