GitHub Actions vs Jenkins comparison

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GitHub Actions

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Jenkins and GitHub Actions compete in the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) space. GitHub Actions appears to have the upper hand in terms of integration and ease of use, while Jenkins shines with its extensive plugin support and customization capabilities.

Features: Jenkins is renowned for its open-source community, extensive plugin ecosystem, and high flexibility as an automation platform. It offers configurable pipelines and integration capabilities with third-party systems, supporting CI/CD processes effectively. In contrast, GitHub Actions is praised for its seamless integration within GitHub, simplifying CI/CD pipelines while facilitating automation without manual intervention. It offers built-in scalability and a user-friendly interface, making it versatile for various deployment needs.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins could refine its user interface, enhance plugin stability, and streamline cloud integration processes, particularly with AWS and Azure. GitHub Actions could expand its programming language support, simplify debugging processes, and improve dashboard and pipeline management. Both platforms could enhance specific integrations to boost user experience further.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins is prevalently used in on-premises and hybrid environments, heavily supported by its open-source community via extensive documentation and forums. GitHub Actions is often deployed in public cloud settings, appreciated for its streamlined cloud integration and comprehensive community support that includes detailed documentation and forums for user assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins is an open-source, cost-effective solution with no licensing fees but some addon costs. It offers significant ROI through operational savings. GitHub Actions provides a mostly free service with additional costs for enterprise features beyond certain usage limits. Advanced features and enterprise plans carry pricing, though users find them generally affordable. Both solutions deliver notable ROI through automation efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: March 2026).

GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins

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Helped 884,797 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

GitHub Actions

Ranking in Build Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 March 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 7.9%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 7.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
GitHub Actions	7.9%
Jenkins	7.3%
Other	84.8%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra

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.

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Mahdi Mallaki

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.

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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

"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."

"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."

"The main benefit is collaboration. It allows us to easily collaborate with other developers, regardless of location. For example, we can collaborate with both our African and German colleagues seamlessly. It's platform-agnostic, so it is flexible and not tied to any OS, so we can work on Linux, Windows, web, and even Oracle applications. It's flexible, reliable, and overall an excellent tool for our needs."

"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."

"GitHub Actions can be easily configured, especially for environment variables and secrets. The UI is understandable and user-friendly for setting up CI/CD pipelines. I prefer tools like GitLab, where the pipeline starts quickly and is accessible near the commits for easy access. However, many CI/CD tools are interchangeable due to similar features of GitHub Actions and other similar tools."

"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."

"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."

"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."

More GitHub Actions 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."

"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."

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

"Jenkins is a very mature product."

"For business needs, Jenkins is the most relevant choice because it can be self-hosted, the price is good, it’s robust, and requires almost no effort for maintenance."

"The initial setup is simple."

"I like the business logs. It's a very useful tool. Client-server communication is also very fast."

"Jenkins has a lot of built-in packages and tools."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."

"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."

"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."

"There could be more integration options with different platforms."

"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."

"In our company, procedures or rules need to be completed, which is not a problem with GitHub Actions but with our process."

"Improvements could be made in terms of time-saving capabilities and resolving potential complexities in centralized workflows."

"We can leverage this database tool to manage everything within our environment and data burners, allowing for customization and execution. An additional advantage is the capability to modify aspects like file size, making processes more efficient and faster across the pipelines. Regarding improvements or implementations, I believe there should be enhancements made to the deployment tool. It should be integrated as part of the solution. Infrastructure-wise, we already have tools like GitHub and RobSpot, and data enables us to automate various processes, which is quite beneficial. As for further enhancements, I'm uncertain. I've shared everything I know. However, if there's something specific you'd like to see in future releases, a feature that may not exist yet but would be desirable, I can't provide any input on that matter."

More GitHub Actions cons

"They need to improve their documentation."

"It does not have a very user-friendly interface."

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

"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, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."

"Performance-wise. This needs to be improved. Not only performance-wise, some functionality or some features can be added to Jenkins."

"The major drawback with Jenkins is the lack of support."

"The documentation on plugin development could be better: more examples. "

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."

"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."

"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."

"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."

"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."

"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."

"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."

"Jenkins is open source."

"It is an open source."

"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."

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

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

"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."

"It is free."

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

19%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	28
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	57

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitHub Actions?

I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...

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?

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.

Harness vs GitHub Actions

Comparisons

Tekton vs GitHub Actions

Compared 16% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

TeamCity vs GitHub Actions

Compared 8% of the time

Buildkite vs GitHub Actions

Compared 8% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitHub Actions

Compared 4% of the time

More GitHub Actions Competitors

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 11% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 5% of the time

Digital.ai Release vs Jenkins

Compared 3% of the time

More Jenkins Competitors

Product Reports

GitHub Actions

Download GitHub Actions product report

Download Jenkins product report

Overview

GitHub Actions streamlines CI/CD processes with an intuitive YAML workflow and robust automation, enhancing efficiency and integration with third-party tools and cloud providers.

GitHub Actions automates development pipelines, supports scalable public and private runners, and manages secure secrets. This tool integrates seamlessly with platforms like AWS, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, and Databricks. It enhances DevOps workflows with reliable task automation. Users note areas for UI and deployment tool improvements, artifact management simplification, and additional programming language support. Debugging complexity and hosting agent transitions pose challenges, along with integration enhancements for tools like OneDrive.

What are GitHub Actions' key features?

YAML Workflow Creation: Simplifies configuration with intuitive YAML.
CI/CD Integration: Provides seamless integration within DevOps pipelines.
Automation Capabilities: Automates tasks with minimal manual intervention.
Third-Party Tool Compatibility: Works well with diverse tools and platforms.
Secure Secrets Management: Protects sensitive information effectively.

What benefits do users find in GitHub Actions?

Enhanced Performance: Boosts task execution speed and reliability.
Scalability: Supports growth with flexible runner options.
Improved Release Cycles: Ensures consistent updates and deployments.
Workflow Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks, increasing operational efficiency.

Companies in tech and software development frequently utilize GitHub Actions for integrating, deploying, and versioning projects. It is often employed for deploying applications to cloud environments like AWS and Kubernetes, managing extensive CI/CD workflows, and automating test and security operations, thereby streamlining production cycles across industries.

GitHub

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

Information Not Available

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

GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins