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GNU Make vs Jenkins comparison

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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
24th
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
6.8
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.7%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.7%
GNU Make1.8%
Other87.5%
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…
HG
Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Automated pipelines have halved deployment time and allow developers to focus only on coding
The best features that Jenkins offers me are high customizability along with the support of Groovy language, which allows me to write my own functions and logic to deploy applications and configure the pipeline according to my use case. Its high integration capability with many plugins is also a significant advantage. For example, we have certain cloud functions running on Google Cloud Run, and we deploy those in the form of containers. Jenkins is highly integratable with Docker through plugins, so we installed those plugins in Jenkins and provided the credentials and logic for execution. Additionally, we have a Bitbucket environment and AWS deployments where we also use Jenkins' strong AWS plugins to deploy resources effectively. Thanks to these plugins, it's easy to deploy rather than creating custom logic. I have covered pretty much everything about the features of Jenkins.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"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."
"Make tool, originally made for the GNU operating system, helps in the generation of executable from the main program source files."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"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."
"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 a build automation utility for running builds on various Linux flavored platforms."
"Automation of chores like deployment, frequent manual tasks (like running scripts on test and production systems) reduced the time used and the number of errors made by engineers, freeing them to do meaningful work instead."
"Jenkins has built good plugins and has a good security platform."
"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate. There is a large user base to provide community support, which I find very valuable. If I need to find a better way to do something, I can always get help from the community. Automation is about thinking outside of the box, and other users are constantly adding new plugins."
"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."
"My advice to others is this is a tool that will help save time have good coverage for the validation environment and test more hardware capabilities."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
"With Jenkins, the pipeline will take your code from any versioning system like GitHub or Bitbucket, all the security scans can happen in one go and then all the tests also get run, and you can just build one container in it and deploy it."
"Jenkins' most valuable feature is Pipeline."
 

Cons

"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output."
"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 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 is a bad candidate for builds that require incremental builds often, as it does not support this feature."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
"Partition security for the workflow of projects is not yet an option."
"I'd like to see some more features for scriptwriting and a more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines."
"The solution could improve by having more advanced integrations."
"The major drawback with Jenkins is the lack of support."
"The user interface could definitely be improved, and I rate it close to zero."
"Occasional technical glitches after upgrades."
"Jenkins has many outdated plugins, and several are paid, which can be unnecessary."
"It would be helpful if they had a bit more interactive UI."
 

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."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."
"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."
"Jenkins is open source."
"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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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?
We are using a community version of Jenkins and did not purchase it through the AWS Marketplace. The main cost for using Jenkins is related to the server it is hosted on and the allocated capacity....
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
Jenkins has many outdated plugins, and several are paid, which can be unnecessary. Better plugin maintainability is needed, and given the AI advancements today, AI support in Jenkins would be benef...
 

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Find out what your peers are saying about GNU Make vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,714 professionals have used our research since 2012.