We performed a comparison between Jenkins and Gitlab based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, GitLab comes out ahead of Jenkins. Our reviewers found that installation on Windows is not intuitive and its maintenance can be more demanding.
"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."
"We use the Git repository and tagging feature. We are a product-based company and use this solution to move to a forward or backward tag."
"The most valuable features of Gitlab are integration with CIE and the ability to rapidly deploy solutions, projects, and applications. It is very easy to use, and there are no complaints."
"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."
"The solution makes the CI/CD pipelines easy to execute."
"Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable."
"This solution has helped us in automating the build and test process, reducing time."
"It is very useful for us to be able to collect and manage automatic processing pipelines."
"Jenkins is very stable."
"I am not aware of the available options in the market right now compared to Jenkins, but I am pretty much happy with the service that Jenkins is providing our company."
"Jenkins is a very mature product."
"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."
"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."
"It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful."
"The solution could be faster."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly. We do most of our operations through the website interface but it could be better."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"The integration could be slightly better."
"Merge conflicts and repository maintenance could improve. If there is someone new to the system they would not know if there is a conflict."
"Jenkins is an old product, and we encounter performance issues and slow response. Also, some of the plugins are not stable."
"And I don't care too much for the Jenkins user interface. It's not that user-friendly compared to other solutions available right now. It's not a great user experience. You can do just fine if you are a techie, but it would take a novice some time to learn it and get things done."
"For this solution to be a 10, it has to be a lot more stable. Maybe the public version of Jenkins is stable, but in our case it's not stable."
"Its schedule builds need improvement. It should have scheduling features in the platform rather than using external plug-ins."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
"Jenkins should adopt the Pipeline as Code approach by building a deployment pipeline using the Jenkins file."
"Jenkins is not an easy solution to use and the configuration is not simple. They can improve the solution by adding a graphical interface that is more user-friendly."
"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."
GitLab is ranked 1st in Build Automation with 70 reviews while Jenkins is ranked 2nd in Build Automation with 83 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while Jenkins is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Jenkins writes "A highly-scalable and stable solution that reduces deployment time and produces a significant return on investment". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, SonarQube and GitHub CoPilot, whereas Jenkins is most compared with Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, IBM Rational Build Forge, Tekton and Harness. See our GitLab vs. Jenkins report.
See our list of best Build Automation vendors.
We monitor all Build Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
