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GitLab vs Jenkins vs Travis CI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 June 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 15.4%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.5%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Travis CI is 0.8%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements
The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.
Mahdi Mallaki - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a community of plugin providers but needs improvement in Kubernetes integration
Integrating Jenkins with other tools or solutions has presented some challenges. For instance, when attempting to integrate Jenkins with Kubernetes, I encountered numerous errors, which took several days to resolve. In Jenkins, adding a feature typically involves incorporating the repository feature separately. Jenkins lacks built-in Git repository functionality, necessitating an external Git repository to store Jenkins manifests. In contrast, GitLab offers an integrated Git repository and pipeline runner, streamlining the process. One improvement for Jenkins could be integrating a Git server, simplifying the management of CI/CD pipelines. Currently, with Jenkins, modifying pipeline manifests requires navigating to a separate Git repository. In GitLab, however, manifest changes can be made directly within the repository.
Pravar Agrawal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."
"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."
"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."
"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the review, patch repo, and plans are in YAML."
"Jenkins has built good plugins and has a good security platform."
"The most valuable features are Jenkins Pipelines for ALM and full Deploy Cycle."
"Jenkins has excellent task planning features."
"It's very useful when you want to automate different processes from beginning to end."
"We use Jenkins to automatically build Python binaries into several OS's i.e. OS X, Ubuntu, Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit."
"The automated elements are easy to use and you can put them into your server."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are its ease of use and good plugins available. You are able to connect to a lot of solutions."
"We used it for all continuous integration parts, like automation testing, deployment, etc."
"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."
 

Cons

"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."
"The solution could be faster."
"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."
"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."
"Technologies are always changing. Nowadays, new things like serverless computing and workload management have emerged. We have noticed a few gap items for faster service delivery. For example, we do user interface testing in the latest team and automate it using some tools. Recently, we integrated a tool with user interface testing, which can simulate a multi-user environment. So, we would like to see more integration with different platforms."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"I don't really like the new Kubernetes integration because it is pretty focused on the on-premise environment, but we're in a hybrid environment."
"The major drawback with Jenkins is the lack of support."
"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."
"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."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
"Jenkins can be improved, but it's difficult for me to explain. The initial setup could be more straightforward. If you connect Jenkins with bookings and lockouts, it can be challenging."
"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."
"Jenkins could improve the integration with other platforms."
"The documentation is not helpful, as it is not user-friendly."
"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."
"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"We are using the freeware version of Jenkins."
"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
"Jenkins is open source."
"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 solution is one of the lowest costs compared to competitors."
"It is an open source."
Information not available
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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
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
One significant feature we lack is the configuration that enforces code reviews, which simplifies the development lif...
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...
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 pro...
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.
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 ...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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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
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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.