CircleCI vs Jenkins comparison

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CircleCI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

Jenkins and CircleCI compete in the continuous integration category, each excelling in different areas. Jenkins has the upper hand in terms of flexibility and plugin diversity, while CircleCI stands out for its ease of setup and cloud integration.

Features: Jenkins offers a vast open-source plugin ecosystem, extensive flexibility, and strong integration capabilities. It supports complex workflows with robust community support and customizable plugins. CircleCI provides ease of setup, efficient GitHub integration, and streamlined workflows, ideal for quick deployments.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins needs improvements in UI, plugin stability, and cloud functionalities, with better documentation and integration options. CircleCI users seek enhanced dashboard features, pricing transparency, and simpler Orb usage, along with better integration with more platforms like Azure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins supports diverse environments, including on-premises setups, but requires considerable setup effort, relying on community support. CircleCI is ideal for public cloud environments, ensuring smoother deployments and direct support for faster resolutions.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins is free and open-source, offering cost savings and high ROI through its community and plugin capabilities. While its enterprise solutions may incur costs, it reduces the need for proprietary tools. CircleCI, though seen as pricey, provides value with its seamless integrations, favoring businesses focused on cloud operations and efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed CircleCI vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: December 2025).

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CircleCI vs. Jenkins

December 2025

Helped 880,435 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

CircleCI

Ranking in Build Automation

13th

Average Rating

6.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Software Development (200th)

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 January 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.5%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.5%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Jenkins	7.5%
CircleCI	3.5%
Other	89.0%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

RahulArora

Global Head - DevOps and AIOps Startegist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Automated CI/CD pipelines have transformed deployment speed and collaboration for my teams

CircleCI offers fast parallel builds, easy integration with GitHub, and the ability to deploy applications on Kubernetes pods, which are amazing features. Fast parallel builds and GitHub integration have definitely helped my team reach faster time to market for our applications. Previously, our deployment used to take a couple of hours when doing it manually, but with CircleCI pipeline, our hours-long job has been converted to a couple of minutes. Its simplicity, fast pipeline execution, and strong GitHub and GitLab integrations are definitely unique advantages I discovered while using CircleCI. Time saved is one of the key aspects I have seen since using CircleCI. I have noticed fewer deployment errors, and it has helped me with easy debugging. Time saved is directly proportional to the cost and effort saved. CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by integrating directly with my Git repositories as a fully managed SaaS platform. CircleCI has a great impact on my team's collaboration and communication, with around 25 to 40 developers and DevOps engineers using it daily across multiple repositories and environments, helping us use it at scale. CircleCI has significantly increased our release frequency and deployment speed compared to before I started using it. CircleCI improves security for my organization by enforcing automated checks in the pipeline and securely managing secrets through environment variables while providing auditable deployments. CircleCI integrates seamlessly with my DevOps toolchain by connecting directly to GitHub, container registries, and my cloud platform AWS, allowing the entire CI/CD flow from code commit to deployment and monitoring with minimal manual effort.

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

"CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, saving substantial engineering hours and effort for me, which has directly improved my productivity and release velocity, reflecting incredible ROI."

"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

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

"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."

"CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment."

"Jenkins is very stable."

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

"The simplicity of Jenkins and the evolving ecosystem of Jenkins are most valuable. Today, you do not have to write a pipeline from scratch. The library functionality of Jenkins helps you to bring all those in ready-made, and you also get the best practices for them. That is a great feature of Jenkins, and that is why it is being used significantly."

"We have started to integrate Pipelines as a part of a build, and built a library of common functions. It simplified and made our build scripts more readable."

"The automated elements are easy to use and you can put them into your server."

"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."

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

"Jenkins is very user-friendly."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"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."

"A return on investment with CircleCI has not been observed, and no relevant metrics such as time saved or fewer employees needed can be shared."

"Billing is a mess."

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

"I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved."

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

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

"They need to improve their documentation."

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

"We cannot change the ownership of any directory or file or any kind of directory."

"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."

"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."

"It would be helpful if they had a bit more interactive UI."

"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."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

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

"It is free."

"It is a free product."

"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."

"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 open-source server."

"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

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 CircleCI?

There is not much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that is managed by the legal team.

What needs improvement with CircleCI?

CircleCI's Orbs are not as easy to use as they could be. If CircleCI implemented a function approach similar to GitHub Actions, it would be significantly better. CircleCI could be improved if it co...

What advice do you have for others considering CircleCI?

For others looking into using CircleCI, study thoroughly about CircleCI's Orbs because they are quite complicated. The overall review rating for CircleCI is 6 out of 10.

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.

GitHub Actions vs CircleCI

Comparisons

Tekton vs CircleCI

Compared 14% of the time

GitLab vs CircleCI

Compared 10% of the time

Compared 9% of the time

TeamCity vs CircleCI

Compared 8% of the time

Harness vs CircleCI

Compared 6% of the time

More CircleCI Competitors

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 12% of the time

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

Travis CI vs Jenkins

Compared 3% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

Download CircleCI product report

Build Automation

January 2026

Download Jenkins product report

January 2026

Overview

CircleCI is a continuous integration and delivery platform that automates software development, streamlining the process for engineers and developers. It's valued for its ability to enhance development speed while maintaining high software quality.

Known for its robust CI/CD capabilities, CircleCI supports a wide range of programming languages and integrations, allowing teams to build and deploy code with efficiency and reliability. Its flexibility and automation features help teams quickly adapt to changing project requirements. CircleCI's cloud-based architecture ensures scalability and accessibility, making it an attractive option for modern development environments.

What are CircleCI's key features?

Continuous Integration: Automates code integration with testing to catch errors early.
Continuous Deployment: Simplifies the process of deploying code to production environments.
Customizable Workflows: Offers flexibility in defining build, test, and deployment stages.
Parallel Execution: Speeds up builds by running multiple tasks at once.
VCS Integration: Seamlessly integrates with platforms like GitHub and Bitbucket.

What benefits can users expect when using CircleCI?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines development workflows, reducing the time to market.
Improved Code Quality: Early error detection through automation increases overall quality.
Scalability: Ability to handle growing workloads as development needs evolve.
Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork through shared visibility and control over development processes.

In tech-driven industries, CircleCI enables efficient software development pipelines. Its ability to run automated tests and manage deployments effectively is particularly beneficial in fast-paced, innovation-driven fields like fintech, mobile app development, and SaaS platforms. Offering tools that meet high-demand environments, it supports teams in delivering timely and quality software products.

CircleCI

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

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent

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