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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
6.9
Number of Reviews
93
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"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."
"Jenkins is very user-friendly."
"We use Jenkins for everything, empowering developers to have the confidence to deploy their solutions themselves into production instead of asking us as an operations guide."
"Jenkins is a great tool for continuous integration."
"The auto-schedule feature is valuable. Another valuable feature is that Jenkins does not trigger a build when there is no change in any of the systems. Jenkins also supports most of the open-source plug-ins."
"Jenkins is a great solution if you're looking at automation because it reduces manual work and improves performance."
"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."
"Jenkins is a very mature product; it has got a lot of support as far as integrating Jenkins with other tools is concerned, with many plugins available in both open-source and commercial ecosystems, and it is easy to configure, easy to scale, and the initial setup is easy."
"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."
 

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 is a bad candidate for builds that require incremental builds often, as it does not support this feature."
"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."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"The documentation is not helpful, as it is not user-friendly."
"They should improve the Version Control tracking system in Jenkins."
"Many of the plugins needs to be streamlined, their terminology needs to be the same and some plugins should be split into multiple smaller plugins."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
"There are a lot of things that they can try to improvise. They can reduce a lot of configurations."
"I would like to see even more integrations included in the next release."
"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."
"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."
 

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."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"The solution is open source."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

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?
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.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.