No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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

"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."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
"Make tool, originally made for the GNU operating system, helps in the generation of executable from the main program source files."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"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."
"I think this product has all you need."
"Jenkins is a CI/CD tool and is the most robust tool."
"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."
"The most beneficial thing is being able to do everything with just one click, which was not possible previously when any changes needed to be carried out manually."
"From a deployment perspective, we don't require any passwords or any permissions and all, everything we can do from Jenkins, and whenever something fails we have the facility to check the logs so we can find the solutions and fix things, plus the initial setup is simple, the stability is good, the dashboards are very good, the solution has been very easy to use, and it offers very good, very clear documentation that is laid out well and easy to explain to a new user."
"The deploying and assessing of the development of our code and our application has been really useful, it's getting a bit easier for us to use Jenkins, and it is really helping us."
"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."
"Don't focus on the fact that Jenkins is open source."
"Being able to test builds for each branch before it is merged to mainstream branch helped to improve stability of the app and have faster develop-test iterations."
 

Cons

"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. A wrapper named colormake exists to work around this, but native (opt-in) support would be welcome."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"There are a lot of things that they can try to improvise. They can reduce a lot of configurations."
"The upgrades need improvement."
"UI is quite outdated."
"A more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines would be helpful."
"Polish for the user interface, stability of plugins beyond the very most commonly used ones."
"The documentation on plugin development could be better: more examples. ​"
"It would be helpful if they had a bit more interactive UI."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
 

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."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."
"​It is free.​"
"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."
"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."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.