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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
18th
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
6.9
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.5%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.5%
GNU Make1.7%
Other87.8%
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…
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."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"I think this product has all you need."
"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."
"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
"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."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"I like that you can find a wide range of plugins for Jenkins."
"The simplicity of Jenkins and the evolving ecosystem of Jenkins are most valuable."
"Has enabled full automation of the company."
"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."
"I love Jenkins. I like that you work on anything, and you make anything. Jenkins is very important for my team. I am satisfied with the product."
"Has a good interface, is reliable and saves time."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that there are multiple features, as we can abstract certain variables and then build our deployment routine while being able to do some abstraction onto the SSH connections."
"Also, the ability to customize these plugins is valuable. Its user-friendliness stands out, especially in its user interface which allows easy installation and configuration."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"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."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."
"The UI of Jenkins could improve."
"The UI must be more user-friendly."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market."
"Jenkins could have better cloud functionality. Currently, we are using the existing legacy model, but we are moving toward the cloud, so it would be great if they could improve in that area. In the future, I would like more cloud features and related training materials, like a video tutorial."
"The bug fix speed is very slow."
"From time to time Jenkins experiences problems after 1-2 weeks of intensive work (where at least 1-2 jobs are running at any point of time)."
"The product should provide more visualization as to how many pipelines are performing and how many builds are happening. It should also integrate with Kubernetes and OpenShift."
 

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."
"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."
"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."
"Jenkins is open source."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise14
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: September 2026.
917,382 professionals have used our research since 2012.