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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
24th
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.0%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.0%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.0%
Other88.0%
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.
JI
Principal Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Efficient resource allocation and robust workflow with autoscaling capabilities
In Kubernetes, we use node-based architecture with nodes and pods and follow practices like RBAC and rollback. Multiple pods can run concurrently. We benefit from Kubernetes' ability to autoscale pods and use horizontal pod autoscalers to adjust the number of pods based on metrics like CPU or memory usage, ensuring efficient resource allocation and stability under load.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I utilized the reporting features and a number of documents, as well as statuses."
"We chose this solution because it is in line with the budget and customer preferences."
"This solution has provided us with better quality and less time to market for our software products."
"Jenkins integrates with multiple tools like Bitbucket and makes life easier. We don't have to write a lot of code since a lot of libraries are available."
"In this solution, you can write scripts and put job parameters in them with time and dates when to activate, create a web book that is automatically configured, and easily use automated elements with plenty of plugins to push your code into a target or container."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."
"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate."
"Jenkins is particularly valuable since it saves time by automating manual tasks."
"We use it for the automation pipeline in our development of software, where it compiles and moves the software to deployment in the Microsoft Azure cloud and also generates documentation for all the software."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more user friendly."
"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. 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."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem."
"Some plugins have critical bugs and are not able to be used."
"The setup of Jenkins takes a lot of time. Having faster deployment would be helpful."
"The user interface could be improved, and its reporting capabilities need enhancement. The plugins could be more effective."
"Tasks such as deployment, cloning, database switchover, and all other database missions and tasks are being done through Jenkins. If a job does not go through, at times the error message does not clearly indicate what caused the failure. I have to escalate it to the Jenkins DevOps team just to see what caused the failure. If the error message is clear, then I wouldn't have to escalate the issue to different teams."
"There are a lot of things that they can try to improvise. They can reduce a lot of configurations. It is currently supporting Groovy for scripting. It would be really good if it can be improvised for Python because, for most of the automation, we have Python as a script. It would be good if can also support Python. We have a lot of Android builds. These Android builds can be a part of Jenkins. It can have some plug-ins or configurations for Android builds. There should also be some internal matrix to check the performance. We also want to have more REST API support, which is currently not much in Jenkins. We are not able to get more information about running Jenkins. More REST API support should be provided."
"Polish for the user interface, stability of plugins beyond the very most commonly used ones."
"Jenkins is an open-source solution, and people tend to stay on the same version for a long time. When you look for an answer on Google, you often find something that doesn't relate to your implementation. The plugins are both the aspect of Jenkins and also one of the worst because the plugins can have different versions, so it's hard to figure out how to solve the problems."
"I think an integrated help button, that respected the context of the change/work in hand, would be a worthwhile improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."
"The pricing for Jenkins is free."
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
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?
Jenkins is used in many companies to save money, especially within R&D divisions, by avoiding the expenses of proprietary tools.
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
I do not have any notes for improvement.
 

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: September 2026.
914,351 professionals have used our research since 2012.