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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
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
2nd
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 July 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.3%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins9.3%
GNU Make1.9%
Other88.8%
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…
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

"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."
"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."
"GNU make is a build automation utility for running builds on various Linux flavored platforms."
"I think this product has all you need."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"Jenkins is very easy to use."
"Don't focus on the fact that Jenkins is open source."
"We can schedule anything with Jenkins, which is useful for deployment or anything that requires scheduling. It also has multiple plugins we can use for Maven, JUnit, etc."
"We significantly reduced build times of large projects (more than 80k lines of Scala code) using build time on Jenkins as a time sample. It reduced the developer write-test-commit cycle time, and increased productivity."
"We use it for the automation pipeline in our development of software, where it compiles and moves the software to deployment in the Microsoft Azure cloud and also generates documentation for all the software."
"I highly recommend Jenkins, it is my favourite CI/CD system."
"It's fantastic. I like it, and I have no problem with it."
"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate."
 

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 is a bad candidate for builds that require incremental builds often, as it does not support this feature."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"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."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output."
"We would like to see the addition of mobile simulators support to this solution, as part of its open-source offering. We currently have to carry out manual testing for these platforms."
"They need more useful tutorials about how to write database related plugins."
"Jenkins should adopt the Pipeline as Code approach by building a deployment pipeline using the Jenkins file."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"Provisioning of VMs during deployment."
"The usability and user interface could be improved."
"One area for improvement would be the UI, which currently looks quite outdated and requires the user to go through too many steps."
"A more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines would be helpful."
 

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 use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
"It is a free product."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."
"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it 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 an open-source platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.