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: September 2025).

GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins

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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

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

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 September 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 10.1%, up from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.1%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitHub Actions	10.1%
Jenkins	9.1%
Other	80.8%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Integration with various environments and cloud providers enhances automation

I use GitHub Actions for CI/CD pipelines. I automate infrastructure, deployment, and all processes. Most companies use CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub Actions is one of the tools available for this purpose The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is that it is completely free. It can be integrated…

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Annamalai Pts

DevOps Engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

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

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…

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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

"It offers numerous built-in features for pipeline management, release management, and even work item tracking on boards, which makes it a versatile tool that seamlessly integrates with hardware and facilitates optimization."

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

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is the ability to automate various tasks, such as backups and deployments, to ease the development workflow."

"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 most valuable features of GitHub Actions include its seamless integration within GitHub, which simplifies the CI/CD pipeline setup. The scalability of using different types of runners—both public and private runners—enhances deployment flexibility."

"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 just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations."

More GitHub Actions pros

"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."

"The deployment of traditional Jenkins is easy."

"A lot of support material exists via a single web search of exactly what you're looking for."

"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."

"It is very useful for us to be able to collect and manage automatic processing pipelines."

"Jenkins allows us to automate deployment, so I no longer have to do it manually. That's the primary use case. The other advantage of Jenkins is that it's open source. It was free for me to download and install. It's a product that's been in use for many years, so I can find a lot of support online for any issues that I may encounter while configuring anything for a given use case."

"Jenkins is a CI/CD tool and is the most robust tool."

"Jenkins can be used for elastic management, if you have any sensitive data or credentials you can use them across the environment. Additionally, the solution is easy to use and can be used across multiple use cases."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

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

"GitHub sometimes makes it difficult to debug actions."

"The UI 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."

"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."

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

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

"We still use Jenkins for some tasks, which suggests there may be areas for improvement in GitHub Actions."

More GitHub Actions cons

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

"Its schedule builds need improvement. It should have scheduling features in the platform rather than using external plug-ins."

"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."

"Jenkins takes a long time to create archive files."

"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."

"Jenkins could improve by adding the ability to edit test automation and make time planning better because it is difficult. It should be easier to do."

"Partition security for the workflow of projects is not yet an option."

"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."

"Jenkins is an open-source tool."

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

"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."

"It is an open source."

"Jenkins is an open-source platform."

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

"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."

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

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	11

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

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?

Frankly, I cannot imagine something that could be improved in GitHub Actions; there's a lot of capabilities, and the feature set is more advanced than we use. The pricing is high for the advanced s...

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.

Harness vs GitHub Actions

Comparisons

Tekton vs GitHub Actions

Compared 30% of the time

Compared 14% of the time

Bamboo vs GitHub Actions

Compared 11% of the time

TeamCity vs GitHub Actions

Compared 10% of the time

SemaphoreCI vs GitHub Actions

Compared 2% of the time

More GitHub Actions Competitors

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 15% of the time

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 15% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

TeamCity vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform 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