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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
2nd
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
1st
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 August 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 7.0%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.9%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins9.9%
GitHub Actions7.0%
Other83.1%
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.
JI
Principal Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Efficient resource allocation and robust workflow with autoscaling capabilities
In Kubernetes, we use node-based architecture with nodes and pods and follow practices like RBAC and rollback. Multiple pods can run concurrently. 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the automation feature of GitHub Actions most valuable for our building processes. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, so there's no extra configuration needed, making the building process easy and efficient. GitHub Actions handles scalability well, automatically managing execution infrastructure without requiring additional configurations. We haven't yet explored GitHub Actions' support for AI projects, as we haven't used its AI capabilities."
"We can trigger files manually or automate processes."
"The product's most beneficial feature is the ability to create workflows within the solution."
"GitHub Actions is a beautiful tool that integrates smoothly with all major tools, reducing CI/CD work by 30% to 40%."
"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."
"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 is a very stable solution as we have not faced any issues."
"It is easy to use, especially if you are accustomed to using GitHub."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that there are multiple features, as we can abstract certain variables and then build our deployment routine while being able to do some abstraction onto the SSH connections."
"Jenkins is the most popular automation engine in the world."
"Jenkins is free and open source."
"Also, the ability to customize these plugins is valuable. Its user-friendliness stands out, especially in its user interface which allows easy installation and configuration."
"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."
"It is very useful for us to be able to collect and manage automatic processing pipelines."
"Jenkins appeared to be a good alternative to become parallel infrastructure purely dedicated for testing."
"Do it! There's really no way you can lose."
 

Cons

"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."
"The UI could be better."
"In terms of improvements, I think better logging for debugging purposes would be helpful, especially for complex workflows."
"GitHub sometimes makes it difficult to debug actions."
"The primary area for improvement I see is in artifact management, especially for saving screenshots or videos from failed tests or data-driven actions. Currently, the configuration for saving these artifacts is complex."
"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."
"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."
"One area for improvement would be the UI, which currently looks quite outdated and requires the user to go through too many steps."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."
"The user interface could definitely be improved, and I rate it close to zero."
"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."
"Logging could be improved to offer a clearer view."
"The scriptwriting process could be improved in this solution in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"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 tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"It is an open source."
"The tool is open-source."
"Jenkins is open source."
"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"It is a free product."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"The solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

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 Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise58
 

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: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.