Chef vs Jenkins comparison

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Chef

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Chef and Jenkins are both solutions in the automation domain, typically viewed as complementary. Jenkins appears to have an upper hand due to its feature robustness.

Features: Chef offers significant flexibility in infrastructure automation, focusing on easy configuration management and system operation simplification. Jenkins is recognized for its expansive plugin ecosystem, which facilitates diverse integrations and supports continuous integration along with automation pipeline capabilities. Chef offers powerful functionalities tailored for managing infrastructure, while Jenkins supports multiple programming languages with ease.

Room for Improvement: Chef could improve its integration and inventory management to be more streamlined like other market options, enhance rollback processes during deployment, and better support for smaller-scale operations. Jenkins, while robust, would benefit from modernizing its default UI, improving handling of YAML manifesting and GitOps, and enhancing clarity in documentation for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins provides a straightforward deployment model backed by a large community. It tends to be favored for ease of implementation in CI processes. Chef demands more infrastructure knowledge for deployment but offers more personalized customer assistance. Jenkins’ community-driven support contrasts with Chef’s dedicated service, which adds value in complex infrastructure setups.

Pricing and ROI: Chef generally involves higher initial setup costs but offers substantial ROI for complex infrastructure management. Jenkins, as an open-source solution, reduces initial investment thanks to its strong community support. Although Chef may justify its pricing with comprehensive assistance in managing infrastructure, Jenkins presents cost-efficient benefits by minimizing expenses from its user community.

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

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Chef vs. Jenkins

February 2026

Helped 881,346 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

Chef

Ranking in Build Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Release Automation (5th), Configuration Management (12th)

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 Chef is 1.9%, up from 0.5% 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%
Chef	1.9%
Other	90.9%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Walter Ochieng Odhiambo

Software Engineer and Tester at Safaricom

Automation has transformed daily infrastructure work and now frees teams to focus on new challenges

One thing that Chef needs to improve on is making it available in as many languages as possible. There should be a focus on how to make it understandable, not just to infrastructure people, but also to those working in monitoring. How can we ensure that it is part of their daily input? That is something that still has a small missing link. We are almost there, but it can help us achieve outcomes in the future in terms of objectives, not just workflows and visibility. How can we make real-time interactive dashboards more available? Look at what kind of tools can be integrated with them, not just working with the ones like Chef Kitchen and Habitat, but trying to make it even more flexible than what we have right now. On support, I think there should be more focus on how we can achieve AI automations in answering questions for beginners and addressing deep concerns without general manual management.

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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

"The product is useful for automating processes."

"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."

"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."

"Using Chef for automating infrastructure and applications in my organization has helped us reduce manual tasks by more than forty percent, thereby saving significant revenue for the client."

"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."

"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."

"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."

"Chef offers valuable features in infrastructure as code, where it uses cookbooks and recipes written in Ruby language for detailed and flexible configuration of systems and applications."

More Chef pros

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that there are multiple features. We can abstract certain variables and then build our deployment routine while being able to do some abstraction onto the SSH connections."

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

"The solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."

"Jenkins' most valuable feature is Pipeline."

"The solution is scalable and concurrent users have access to the platform."

"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."

"Jenkins allows us to automate deployment, so I no longer have to do it manually. That's the primary use case. The other advantage of Jenkins is that it's open source. It was free for me to download and install. It's a product that's been in use for many years, so I can find a lot of support online for any issues that I may encounter while configuring anything for a given use case."

"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"I would also like to see more analytics and reporting features. Currently, the analytics and reporting features are limited. I'll have to start building my own custom solution with Power BI or Tableau or something like that. If it came with built-in analytics and reporting features that would be great."

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

"The learning curve is steep due to Chef's Ruby-based DSL and the complex components of cookbooks and recipes, which can be challenging for new users, especially those without programming backgrounds."

"Chef has a very steep learning curve, especially for beginners."

"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."

"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."

"If only Chef were easier to use and code, it would be used much more widely by the community."

More Chef cons

"UI is quite outdated."

"Logging could be improved to offer a clearer view."

"Its schedule builds need improvement. It should have scheduling features in the platform rather than using external plug-ins."

"Jenkins can be improved, but it's difficult for me to explain. The initial setup could be more straightforward. If you connect Jenkins with bookings and lockouts, it can be challenging."

"Some kind of SaaS product would be helpful in providing organizational structure."

"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."

"Creating a new SonarQube project requires a separate job, and we've encountered some integration issues with Docker and the need for better vulnerability checks."

"The documentation could be more friendly, and more examples of how to use it."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."

"Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."

"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

"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 is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."

"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."

"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."

"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."

"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."

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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	19

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 Chef?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we sidestepped it by using Cinc because none of the functionality that is exclusive to the paid version was actually in use in the orga...

What needs improvement with Chef?

I would add that Ruby is a domain-specific language in the Chef dialect, which is a learning curve, but so is Terraform and so is Ansible. The only feedback would be if they could come up with an i...

What is your primary use case for Chef?

My main use case for Chef is configuration and deployments. We receive blank servers and use Chef to build predefined application or appliance servers. A quick specific example of how I use Chef to...

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.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

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Product Reports

Download Chef product report

Chef

January 2026

Download Jenkins product report

January 2026

Overview

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

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

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

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