CircleCI vs GoCD vs Jenkins comparison

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CircleCI

GoCD

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CircleCI, GoCD, and Jenkins based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: August 2025).

Build Automation

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Helped 866,286 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoCD is 1.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.3%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Jenkins	10.3%
CircleCI	3.3%
GoCD	1.6%
Other	84.8%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521

Chief Technology Officer at Kyberlife

Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage

We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read and understand issues when emailing them. They reply to me with a totally different context about the problem. Just yesterday, my web applications failed to 'yarn build' after I downgraded the resource class from extr-large to large. I contacted support and got no reply. Billing is a mess. There is duplicate information in the bill downloaded from their website and when I asked for a consolidated bill, they just answered that they didn't have it. There is no transparency on how many billed minutes and credits I spent each day both on their website and the monthly bill which makes it difficult to understand when the monthly bill contains many refill item charges. It is difficult or impossible to track usage and burndown of my subscription and to gain total outstanding refill amounts on a daily basis. Their website doesn't provide sufficient information on credits allocated/calculated for my extra-large resource class.

Simplifies the pipeline process, but the access control system needs enhancement

Nishant Narayan Singh

DevOps Architect at Cognizant

One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified. The folder structure is another aspect that could be enhanced, as all jobs are displayed on a single page without the clear organization seen in Jenkins. Implementing a more structured approach to organizing jobs would improve user experience. AI could simplify job creation. For example, instead of manually editing pipelines as code, an AI tool could allow users to input variables and automatically generate the required jobs. It would help reduce human errors, such as issues that arise from incorrect edits in large code files.

Streamlined CI/CD pipelines with powerful integration and an easy setup

Annamalai Pts

DevOps Engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

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…

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It's a stable product."

"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."

"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."

"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."

"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."

"The most notable aspect is its user interface, which we find to be user-friendly and straightforward for deploying and comprehending pipelines. We have the ability to create multiple pipelines, and in addition to that, the resource consumption is impressive."

"The UI is colorful."

"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."

"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."

"Has a good interface, is reliable and saves time."

"Jenkins has built good plugins and has a good security platform."

"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."

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

"It can scale easily."

"Having builds and test tasks triggered on commit helps not to break the product."

"The most valuable feature of Jenkins is its open source."

"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."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

"Billing is a mess."

"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."

"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."

"It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified."

"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."

"The aspect that requires attention is the user management component. When integrating with BitLabs and authenticating through GitLab, there are specific features we desire. One important feature is the ability to import users directly from GitLab, along with their respective designations, and assign appropriate privileges based on that information. Allocating different privileges to users is a time-consuming process for us."

"The tool must be more user-friendly."

"Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management. This needs improvement."

"And I don't care too much for the Jenkins user interface. It's not that user-friendly compared to other solutions available right now. It's not a great user experience. You can do just fine if you are a techie, but it would take a novice some time to learn it and get things done."

"I would like to have an integrated dashboard on top of it and a better UX to look at. The dashboard could be better in terms of integration with other tools. We should be able to have a single pane of glass across all the tools that we use where Jenkins is the pipeline. This can be a very good upgrade to it."

"The user interface could be improved, and its reporting capabilities need enhancement. The plugins could be more effective."

"I sometimes face a bottleneck when installing the plugins on an offline machine. Mapping the dependencies and then installing the correct sequence of dependencies is a nightmare, and it took me two days to do it."

"The disadvantage of Jenkins is writing Groovy scripts. There are other CI tools where you do not need to write this many scripts to manage and deploy."

"The UI must be more user-friendly."

"Upgrading and maintaining plugins can be painful, as sometimes upgrading a plugin can break functionality of another plugin that a job is dependent on."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."

"It's an open-source and free tool."

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

"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."

"Jenkins is open source."

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

"It is free."

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

"The pricing for Jenkins is free."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."

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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…

What do you like most about CircleCI?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

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

Questions from the Community

The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?

Beware of skyrocketing bills as CircleCI does not provide transparency into how they charge refills. Their monthly bi...

What needs improvement with CircleCI?

We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup ...

What do you like most about GoCD?

The UI is colorful.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GoCD?

The product is free of cost.

What needs improvement with GoCD?

One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels becau...

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 requi...

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 pro...

GitHub Actions vs CircleCI

Comparisons

Tekton vs CircleCI

Compared 22% of the time

TeamCity vs CircleCI

Compared 18% of the time

GitLab vs CircleCI

Compared 16% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

Bamboo vs CircleCI

Compared 5% of the time

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GitLab vs GoCD

Compared 28% of the time

GitHub Actions vs GoCD

Compared 18% of the time

Tekton vs GoCD

Compared 10% of the time

BMC Release Lifecycle Management vs GoCD

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GoCD

Compared 8% of the time

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Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 16% of the time

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 15% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Build Automation

Download CircleCI product report

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Download GoCD product report

Download Jenkins product report

Also Known As

No data available

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go

No data available

Overview

CircleCI is a leading platform for automating continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), valued for its capability to manage software updates efficiently. With an easy-to-configure system using YAML files and robust Docker support, CircleCI streamlines backend updates, frontend developments, and mobile app testing across devices. Its parallelism feature and insightful dashboard reduce processing times and improve workflow visibility, respectively, enhancing team collaboration and productivity while maintaining high-quality outputs across development stages.

CircleCI

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers businesses a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility. It was designed for continuous delivery and the concepts essential to this practice are built in at the core.

Thoughtworks

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