GNU Make vs Jenkins comparison

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GNU Make

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GNU Make and Jenkins compete in automation and build management. Jenkins has an advantage with its extensive plugin ecosystem and CI/CD capabilities.

Features: GNU Make is known for handling dependency graphs and rules efficiently. It supports static pattern rules for source compilation and integrates with third-party dependency builders. Jenkins features an extensive set of plugins, offers advanced CI/CD functionalities, and integrates with various tools, enhancing its extensibility.

Room for Improvement: GNU Make could enhance its GUI and modernize its declarative syntax to support advanced automation needs. Jenkins requires improvements in initial configuration complexity and its extensive reliance on plugins can make troubleshooting time-consuming. Better native support features could streamline workflows.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GNU Make is easy to install, requiring minimal configuration and providing a lightweight solution. Jenkins demands more setup effort, but benefits from comprehensive documentation and community support, offering scalable orchestration suitable for large projects.

Pricing and ROI: Both GNU Make and Jenkins are open source without direct setup costs. GNU Make provides a reliable ROI for simple builds. Jenkins offers scalability and automation efficiencies, which justify potential higher initial investments in configuration and maintenance.

To learn more, read our detailed GNU Make vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: February 2026).

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GNU Make vs. Jenkins

February 2026

Helped 881,821 peers since 2012

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

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.2%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Jenkins	7.2%
GNU Make	1.7%
Other	91.1%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Josh Call

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…

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Jamshaid I

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.

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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."

"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."

"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."

"Setup is extremely straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of Jenkins is its continuous deployment. We can deploy to multi-cluster and multi-regions in the cloud."

"Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integration between different tools."

"Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes."

"We use Jenkins to automatically build Python binaries into several OS's i.e. OS X, Ubuntu, Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit."

"Jenkins is very user-friendly."

"I can install Jenkins for integration from multiple developers and automate application delivery, staging, and production environments."

"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration of automatic scripts for testing and the user's ability to use any script."

More Jenkins pros

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 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 does not provide traditional customer support."

"The user interface could be updated a little."

"It could be cheaper."

"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."

"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."

"Adding support for OIDC and internal user databases simultaneously would improve Jenkins."

"The learning curve is quite steep at the moment."

"We need more licensed product integrations."

"The upgrades need improvement."

More Jenkins cons

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."

"The tool is open-source."

"The solution is open source."

"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."

"It is a free product."

"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."

"There is no cost. It is open source."

"Jenkins is an open-source tool."

"Jenkins is an open-source platform."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user184734

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

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?

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.

More GNU Make Competitors

Comparisons

TeamCity vs GNU Make

Compared 18% of the time

CloudBees vs GNU Make

Compared 16% of the time

Bazel vs GNU Make

Compared 15% of the time

LaunchDarkly vs GNU Make

Compared 13% of the time

Tekton vs GNU Make

Compared 12% of the time

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 12% of the time

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

CircleCI vs Jenkins

Compared 3% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

Download GNU Make product report

Build Automation

January 2026

Download Jenkins product report

January 2026

Overview

Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files.

GNU

Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox