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IBM Rational Build Forge vs Jenkins comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

IBM Rational Build Forge
Ranking in Build Automation
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.7%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.7%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.1%
Other87.2%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1538124 - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops and SAFe Specialist at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Useful features, stable, easy to deploy, and works well
Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools.
HG
Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Automated pipelines have halved deployment time and allow developers to focus only on coding
The best features that Jenkins offers me are high customizability along with the support of Groovy language, which allows me to write my own functions and logic to deploy applications and configure the pipeline according to my use case. Its high integration capability with many plugins is also a significant advantage. For example, we have certain cloud functions running on Google Cloud Run, and we deploy those in the form of containers. Jenkins is highly integratable with Docker through plugins, so we installed those plugins in Jenkins and provided the credentials and logic for execution. Additionally, we have a Bitbucket environment and AWS deployments where we also use Jenkins' strong AWS plugins to deploy resources effectively. Thanks to these plugins, it's easy to deploy rather than creating custom logic. I have covered pretty much everything about the features of Jenkins.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I utilized the reporting features and a number of documents, as well as statuses."
"All features are useful; our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool, and it works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."
"Very good reporting features."
"Jenkins is the most popular automation engine in the world."
"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."
"There are a large number of plugins available for integration with third party systems."
"The major benefit of using Jenkins is that it's a very secure way of deploying something to the cloud."
"The most beneficial thing is being able to do everything with just one click, which was not possible previously when any changes needed to be carried out manually."
"We use Jenkins to automatically build Python binaries into several OS's i.e. OS X, Ubuntu, Windows 32-bit and Windows 64-bit."
"This solution has helped us in automating the build and test process, reducing time."
"In my opinion, this is the best open source solution for CI and CD."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more user friendly."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools."
"Not user friendly for the layman."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
"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."
"Jenkins has many outdated plugins, and several are paid, which can be unnecessary."
"UI is quite outdated."
"Jenkins can sometimes run slow, especially when restarting after a plugin installation or when returning from a pipeline view to the dashboard."
"Many of the plugins needs to be streamlined, their terminology needs to be the same and some plugins should be split into multiple smaller plugins."
"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."
"I do not have any notes for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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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 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?
We are using a community version of Jenkins and did not purchase it through the AWS Marketplace. The main cost for using Jenkins is related to the server it is hosted on and the allocated capacity....
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
Jenkins has many outdated plugins, and several are paid, which can be unnecessary. Better plugin maintainability is needed, and given the AI advancements today, AI support in Jenkins would be benef...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational Build Forge
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cars.com
Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.