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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
4th
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 October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GNU Make is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jenkins9.1%
GNU Make1.0%
Other89.9%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

JC
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…
Annamalai Pts - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined CI/CD pipelines with powerful integration and an easy setup
I use Jenkins as a CI/CD tool. We create pipelines using Jenkins, with stages for Maven builds, Docker image builds, SonarQube integration, and deploying the image to a Kubernetes cluster, AWS EKS Jenkins has made the developers' work very easy. They commit to the remote repository, and…

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."
"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."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"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."
"For business needs, Jenkins is the most relevant choice because it can be self-hosted, the price is good, it’s robust, and requires almost no effort for maintenance."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"It is open source, flexible, scalable, and easy to use. It is easy to maintain for the administrator. It is a continuous integration tool, and its enterprise version is quite mature. It has good integrations and plug-ins. Azure DevOps can also be integrated with Jenkins."
"It offers continuous deployment and continuous testing. It enables us to figure out anything."
"I can install Jenkins for integration from multiple developers and automate application delivery, staging, and production environments."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are its ease of use and good plugins available. You are able to connect to a lot of solutions."
"Jenkins is very customizable."
"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."
 

Cons

"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"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."
"The UI must be more user-friendly."
"I would like to see even more integrations included in the next release."
"The solution could improve by having more advanced integrations."
"The bug fix speed is very slow."
"Jenkins is an open-source solution, and people tend to stay on the same version for a long time. When you look for an answer on Google, you often find something that doesn't relate to your implementation. The plugins are both the aspect of Jenkins and also one of the worst because the plugins can have different versions, so it's hard to figure out how to solve the problems."
"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."
"It could be cheaper."
"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."
 

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."
"Jenkins is an open-source tool."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"Jenkins is a free solution, 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 open-source, so it is free."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"​It is free.​"
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

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 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.
 

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 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.