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CircleCI vs Jenkins vs Travis CI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 April 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.6%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Travis CI is 2.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins7.3%
CircleCI3.6%
Travis CI2.2%
Other86.9%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Elevenxcapital
Automated parallel pipelines have accelerated deployments but complex configs still need simplification
CircleCI can be improved by making it less costly, as it is very expensive. The config complexity, like the YAML config, can become messy in complex projects. Making it simpler, much like having a Docker Compose YAML or Kubernetes YAML, is necessary from that perspective. Rather than keeping it a SaaS project, they can think of it through a Jenkins approach, where we can also self-host it into our environment, but it is acceptable. It is very expensive, and many organizations cannot afford it. The config complexity, like the YAML configs, can become messy in complex projects. A better DevOps person can only handle it, not a normal person. For that reason, I chose a rating of seven. It is quite expensive, to be honest. As mentioned, many organizations cannot afford it because of the parallel execution prices as well as the config complexity.
Mahdi Mallaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Devops Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Has a community of plugin providers but needs improvement in Kubernetes integration
Integrating Jenkins with other tools or solutions has presented some challenges. For instance, when attempting to integrate Jenkins with Kubernetes, I encountered numerous errors, which took several days to resolve. In Jenkins, adding a feature typically involves incorporating the repository feature separately. Jenkins lacks built-in Git repository functionality, necessitating an external Git repository to store Jenkins manifests. In contrast, GitLab offers an integrated Git repository and pipeline runner, streamlining the process. One improvement for Jenkins could be integrating a Git server, simplifying the management of CI/CD pipelines. Currently, with Jenkins, modifying pipeline manifests requires navigating to a separate Git repository. In GitLab, however, manifest changes can be made directly within the repository.
Pravar Agrawal - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior SRE at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For us, this translates to high degree of productivity, ability to detect exactly which build failed and why, and being able to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"It's a stable product."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"Running parallel jobs where dev gets automatically updated every time has helped our team significantly."
"CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to build quicker and do things quicker."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by bringing in faster deployments, which means we can release faster, receive quicker feedback, and enhance collaboration and communication across the entire team."
"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."
"It's very easy to learn."
"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."
"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate."
"With Jenkins, the pipeline will take your code from any versioning system like GitHub or Bitbucket. All the security scans can happen in one go and then all the tests also get run. You can just build one container in it and deploy it."
"The solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."
"We really appreciate that this solution is plug and play, and when coding in the version control system, this product completes the build process automatically."
"It is very useful for us to be able to collect and manage automatic processing pipelines."
"The most beneficial thing is being able to do everything with just one click, which was not possible previously when any changes needed to be carried out manually."
"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."
 

Cons

"I rated CircleCI six out of ten because I think they need more transparency in pricing, as there are instances of unclear network data transfer and storage costs related to caching and workspaces."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"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."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"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."
"For half year we have used circleCI, then we go back to jenkins."
"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."
"Jenkins needs a faster deployment process."
"The learning curve is quite steep at the moment."
"I would like to see more integrations included in the next release."
"In our case, we have several products built using Jenkins. It is quite difficult to navigate into the latest stable build in a given OS."
"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."
"There are a lot of things that they can try to improvise. They can reduce a lot of configurations. It is currently supporting Groovy for scripting. It would be really good if it can be improvised for Python because, for most of the automation, we have Python as a script. It would be good if can also support Python. We have a lot of Android builds. These Android builds can be a part of Jenkins. It can have some plug-ins or configurations for Android builds. There should also be some internal matrix to check the performance. We also want to have more REST API support, which is currently not much in Jenkins. We are not able to get more information about running Jenkins. More REST API support should be provided."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"It is an open source."
"​It is free.​"
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user195582 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Developer at Code Drop Pty Ltd
Nov 17, 2016
Bamboo vs. Travis CI vs. Circle CI vs. Codeship
Continuous integration is a hot topic across the web right now and most conferences have at least a few devops talks that touch on CI and build tools. They usually go something along the lines of, use Phing with Jenkins and touch on the fact that Jenkins used to be called Hudson, has been…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise57
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that I only used CircleCI on the free tier.
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
CircleCI can be improved by making it less costly, as it is very expensive. The config complexity, like the YAML conf...
What advice do you have for others considering CircleCI?
My advice to others looking into using CircleCI is to just not get overwhelmed by the complexity, particularly the co...
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 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...
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
I do not have any notes for improvement.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?
I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.
What needs improvement with Travis CI?
Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere ...
What is your primary use case for Travis CI?
Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis wor...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox
Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails
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