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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 March 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 7.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins7.3%
GNU Make1.9%
Other90.8%
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…
Mahdi Mallaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Devops Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has a community of plugin providers but needs improvement in Kubernetes integration
Integrating Jenkins with other tools or solutions has presented some challenges. For instance, when attempting to integrate Jenkins with Kubernetes, I encountered numerous errors, which took several days to resolve. In Jenkins, adding a feature typically involves incorporating the repository feature separately. Jenkins lacks built-in Git repository functionality, necessitating an external Git repository to store Jenkins manifests. In contrast, GitLab offers an integrated Git repository and pipeline runner, streamlining the process. One improvement for Jenkins could be integrating a Git server, simplifying the management of CI/CD pipelines. Currently, with Jenkins, modifying pipeline manifests requires navigating to a separate Git repository. In GitLab, however, manifest changes can be made directly within the repository.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
"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."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"I like that you can find a wide range of plugins for Jenkins."
"For business needs, Jenkins is the most relevant choice because it can be self-hosted, the price is good, it’s robust, and requires almost no effort for maintenance."
"We have started to integrate Pipelines as a part of a build, and built a library of common functions. It simplified and made our build scripts more readable."
"Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes."
"Jenkins is very user-friendly."
"It has a lot of community posts and support."
"Has enabled full automation of the company."
"We really appreciate that this solution is plug and play. When coding in the version control system, this product completes the build process automatically."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"Sometimes, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."
"The onboarding of Jenkins should be smoother, and it should have more pipelines available as it's deployed on many different servers."
"Jenkins needs a faster deployment process."
"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."
"Support should be provided at no cost, as there is no free support available for any of the free versions."
"Jenkins takes a long time to create archive files."
"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."
 

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."
"The solution is open source."
"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."
"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."
"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"Jenkins is open source."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
"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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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
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

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: March 2026.
883,896 professionals have used our research since 2012.