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GitHub Actions 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

GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
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 May 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 6.5%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 8.7%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins8.7%
GitHub Actions6.5%
Other84.8%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at ENTERPRISE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS LIMITED
Has supported repository management and demonstrates potential in workflow flexibility
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas concerning deeper capabilities akin to those provided by Jenkins and Azure DevOps. Given the evolving nature of technology, there are potential improvements GitHub Actions can focus on, including enhancing support and reliability to match its competitors.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."
"Creating workflows in YAML format is straightforward and easy to comprehend. This includes both understanding and writing workflows. Additionally, the downloading aspect for third-party instances can also be easily done. It's worth noting that vulnerability analysis and similar tasks should be part of our automation through data workflows. Furthermore, we can break down our processes step by step, starting from building, then moving on to analysis, testing, and finally deploying in production and the clear environment. All of these tasks can be efficiently managed within this platform."
"It saves a lot of time with GitHub Actions; especially, the whole process if done manually might cost us a lot, maybe a week or two weeks just for deployment, but now with automation, we automate the deployment effectively."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"It is a very stable solution as we have not faced any issues."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"Jenkins' stability is good, and we haven't had any issues with downtime."
"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."
"We use it for the automation pipeline in our development of software, where it compiles and moves the software to deployment in the Microsoft Azure cloud and also generates documentation for all the software."
"Jenkins is free and open source."
"Jenkins is very stable."
"Jenkins has excellent task planning features."
"I like that you can find a wide range of plugins for Jenkins."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
 

Cons

"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."
"In our company, procedures or rules need to be completed, which is not a problem with GitHub Actions but with our process."
"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"We still use Jenkins for some tasks, which suggests there may be areas for improvement in GitHub Actions."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"The minor drawback of GitHub Actions is the management of the dashboard and pipeline runs, which needs improvement. The dashboard for running pipelines could be better."
"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."
"Centralized user management would be helpful."
"Sometimes, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."
"Jenkins can sometimes run slow, especially when restarting after a plugin installation or when returning from a pipeline view to the dashboard."
"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."
"Provisioning of VMs during deployment."
"Jenkins could improve by adding the ability to edit test automation and make time planning better because it is difficult."
"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."
"I would like to see more integrations included in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"The tool is open-source."
"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"​It is free.​"
"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I would rate pricing a seven, which leans toward the expensive side. However, there is still value for money, and that's why we continue using it.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas con...
What is your primary use case for GitHub Actions?
The main use case for GitHub Actions is maintaining enterprise repositories in private for security reasons, because we have multiple enterprise clients. We're using the premium GitHub service for ...
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 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.
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
I do not have any notes for improvement.
 

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 GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.