GitHub Actions vs Jenkins comparison

Read 93 Jenkins reviews

3,699 Views
3,625 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

GitHub Actions

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: July 2025).

GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins

Download the complete report

Helped 863,901 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

4th

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

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 11.5%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.5%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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…

Read full review

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…

Read full review

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 a beautiful tool that integrates smoothly with all major tools, reducing CI/CD work by 30% to 40%."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."

"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."

"The level of automation achievable is really good. So, the custom workflow creation and Marketplace Actions improved our project's efficiency."

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

"The product's most beneficial feature is the ability to create workflows within the solution."

More GitHub Actions pros

"The most valuable features of Jenkins are creating builds, and connecting them with Sonar for Sonar analysis. Additionally, we connect it with other vulnerability tools, such as WhiteSource which is useful."

"Different types of jobs, such as Pipeline, Build, Freestyle, Maven, etc."

"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."

"It's very useful when you want to automate different processes from beginning to end."

"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."

"GitHub linking is pretty good. We have a deployment application where we can run our tests and add various variables to be passed as assertions to those tests. This is pretty fluid with Jenkins."

"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."

"Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."

"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."

"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

More GitHub Actions cons

"The onboarding of Jenkins should be smoother, and it should have more pipelines available as it's deployed on many different servers."

"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."

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

"The UI must be more user-friendly."

"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."

"Jenkins could improve by allowing more scripting languages. We need to use Groovy scripting and it is difficult to debug and it is not ideal for creating file scripts. We tried to search for assistance but we did not find much help."

"We sometimes face challenges during version upgrades, such as failures when migrating Kubernetes versions."

"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."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."

"Jenkins is a free open-source server."

"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."

"The tool is open-source."

"Jenkins is open source."

"The pricing for Jenkins is free."

"Jenkins is an open-source tool."

"There is no cost. It is open source."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 33% of the time

Compared 14% of the time

Bamboo vs GitHub Actions

Compared 14% of the time

TeamCity vs GitHub Actions

Compared 9% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs GitHub Actions

Compared 2% of the time

More GitHub Actions Competitors

Harness vs Jenkins

Compared 16% of the time

GitLab vs Jenkins

Compared 14% of the time

Bazel vs Jenkins

Compared 9% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 8% 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