GitLab vs Jenkins vs Travis CI comparison

GitLab and Jenkins are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while Jenkins is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1. GitLab holds a 15.9% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 10.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 82 GitLab reviews

6,080 Views
4,974 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Read 93 Jenkins reviews

4,156 Views
3,557 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Travis CI

Read 2 Travis CI reviews

428 Views
410 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

GitLab

Jenkins

Travis CI

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between GitLab, Jenkins, and Travis CI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, Jenkins and others in Build Automation.

To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

April 2025

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Helped 849,963 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:

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. The mindshare of Travis CI is 0.8%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

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.

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Dinesh-Patil

Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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Pravar Agrawal

Senior SRE at IBM

YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing

Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

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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

"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."

"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."

"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."

"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."

"CI/CD is very good. The version control system is also good. These are the two features that we use."

"The scalability is good."

"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."

"It is a speedy platform compared to the others I have used. I have also enjoyed using the platform as this solution offers a good user experience."

More GitLab pros

"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."

"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."

"Jenkins is stable, user-friendly, and helps with continuous integration. As of today, I can't see any tool that's better than Jenkins."

"Jenkins is very user-friendly."

"Very easy to understand for newcomers."

"The solution is scalable and concurrent users have access to the platform."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to connect with different tools and technologies."

"Jenkins has built good plugins and has a good security platform."

More Jenkins pros

"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."

Cons

"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."

"While GitLab is a great tool for developers, it lacks project planner features. Roadmaps and Gantt charts in GitLab are not as advanced as in Jira, and changing start and end dates is more laborious in GitLab."

"The integration could be slightly better."

"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."

"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."

"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."

"Reporting could be improved."

"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."

More GitLab cons

"Performance-wise. This needs to be improved. Not only performance-wise, some functionality or some features can be added to Jenkins."

"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."

"It could be cheaper."

"Support should be provided at no cost, as there is no free support available for any of the free versions."

"Sometimes, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."

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

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

"I think an integrated help button, that respected the context of the change/work in hand, would be a worthwhile improvement."

More Jenkins cons

"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GitLab is cheap."

"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."

"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

"The solution is free."

"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."

"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."

"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"Jenkins is an open-source platform."

"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."

"It is a cheap solution."

"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."

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

"Jenkins is open source and free."

"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."

"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 provi...

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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.

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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 ...

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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 requi...

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What do you like most about Jenkins?

Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes.

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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 pro...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?

I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.

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What needs improvement with Travis CI?

Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere ...

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What is your primary use case for Travis CI?

Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis wor...

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Compared 7% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Fortify Static Code Analyzer vs GitLab

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 8% of the time

JFrog Pipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

April 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

April 2025

Download Jenkins product report

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

April 2025

Download Travis CI product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

GitLab

Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.

Jenkins

Easily sync your GitHub projects with Travis CI and you'll be testing your code in minutes. Travis CI for private repositories has plans for every size project. With Travis CI testing your open source project is 100% free.

Travis CI

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

Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox

Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, Jenkins and others in Build Automation. Updated: April 2025.

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