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GitLab vs Jenkins comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 15.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.4%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.
Dinesh-Patil - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly-scalable and stable solution that reduces deployment time and produces a significant return on investment
The dashboard needs to be improved. Though the access management and authentication functionalities are present, the dashboard and UI could be more user-friendly. The product has many plug-ins. Users have to go through the documentation to be able to use the product. The UI must be more user-friendly. The information should be available in the dashboard itself. The users shouldn’t have to refer to the documentation. When a user hovers over the elements on the dashboard, it should reveal information about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that you can use GitLab as a double-sided solution for both DevOps and version management. It's a good product for working in these two areas, and the user interface makes it easy to understand."
"When a developer checks in code, it is automatically built and deployed, and automated test cases are also run. We have extensive integration with GitLab, which helps us with source code management. We run the static code analysis using SonarQube."
"The scalability is good."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"The solution's service delivery model is fantastic."
"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."
"This is a great integration tool and very powerful."
"Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable."
"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."
"Configuration management: It is so easy to configure a Jenkins instance. Migrate configuration to a new environment just by copying XML files and setting up new nodes."
"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."
"It's a powerful tool for CI/CD."
"I love Jenkins. I like that you work on anything, and you make anything. Jenkins is very important for my team. I am satisfied with the product."
"Jenkins is a very mature product."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD automation features specifically tailored for DigitalOcean would be beneficial."
"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."
"Even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still."
"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"GitLab should enhance its GitOps capability as they are currently using FluxCD, however, Argo CD is better and offers more features. GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."
"Atlassian offers more products than GitLab. GitLab offers source control management, version control and collaboration between developers. Atlassian offers features on top of this as well as more integration points for developers."
"The learning curve is quite steep at the moment."
"The onboarding of Jenkins should be smoother, and it should have more pipelines available as it's deployed on many different servers."
"It does not have a very user-friendly interface."
"The user interface could be updated a little."
"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."
"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."
"Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management. This needs improvement."
"Jenkins should adopt the Pipeline as Code approach by building a deployment pipeline using the Jenkins file."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."
"We are using the open-source version."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"​It is free.​"
"It is an open source."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"The tool is open-source."
"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLa...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
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Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.