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IBM Rational Build Forge vs Tekton comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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
Tekton
Ranking in Build Automation
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tekton is 5.2%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tekton5.2%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.2%
Other92.6%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1330545 - PeerSpot reviewer
CRM Program Release Manager at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center
Great reporting features and very functional
The solution could be more user friendly. Trying to train somebody on it can be difficult. If you're in this field, you kind of learn the tools, but trying to show a PM how to find report sheets to pull data was difficult. I had to show them how to write the queries and pull the data that they needed. It's not a layman's solution. If you're working with a programmer or with an architect, you won't have issues trying to relay how to utilize the tool. It was for those who cut the checks where there were problems enabling them to pull the data they required. I guess the answer is DevOps, but it depends on your environment. Just being able to sign into dashboards and get accurate results was my biggest thing with my PMs on my projects. They like charts and pie graphs, the ability to see things at a glance data where they could make decisions on the fly.
reviewer2741265 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Benefit from a smooth learning curve and efficient adaptability
After seeing Jenkins and Tekton, I think Tekton is quite built on top of Kubernetes, so the learning curve is minimal. If you are working with Kubernetes, then OpenShift created Tekton on top of that, making it easily adaptable. Tekton is highly customizable. With Kubernetes, we can customize on our own and create custom builders. If teams have time and want to make enhancements, they can do it themselves. Whatever OpenShift is providing regarding Tekton is sufficient. It is easy to use because we don't need to write every pod step every time. A proper DevOps engineer can help once or twice, and development teams can easily adapt to that, make small shell script changes in the steps, understand the process, and work with it.

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."
"Very good reporting features."
"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."
"All features are useful. Our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool. It works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."
"Tekton's inclusion in Kubernetes deployment offers better visibility on how Tekton is performing within a cluster. It is lightweight and not as heavy as Jenkins to maintain."
"I like the setup of the dashboard."
"I would say the customization ability that Tekton provides is good."
"Tekton is customizable because with Kubernetes, we can customize on our own."
"Tekton provides a feature where you can schedule the job."
"It is an open-source tool, which makes it highly adaptable."
"We just have some configuration files, and it will handle the deployments smoother and faster compared to CI/CD 2.0."
"The tool offers flexibility and compatibility."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"The product's documentation is an area of concern, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Tekton could improve by adding better documentation."
"Improvement is needed in the documentation and the overall integration process."
"It would be better if Tekton could show the YAML file while it is running, similar to GitHub pipelines, to provide more visibility on what's happening."
"Tekton should include many features to integrate event-driven pipelines."
"The user interface of Tekton could be improved."
"The product's scalability can be challenging when multiple users access it simultaneously."
"RBAC is really needed for Tekton."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is entirely open source and free of charge."
"Tekton is an open-source tool."
"The tool is open-source and free to use."
"The product is free and open-source."
"The product is free of cost."
"The solution is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise23
 

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 needs improvement with Tekton?
I didn't get the intention of scalability. Scalability means based on the load, it will automatically gain resources and run. The question of pipeline scalability remains unclear. It's quite easy t...
What is your primary use case for Tekton?
We use Tekton for build and deployments. For LMP testing, we use the Tekton pipeline. We also use GitHub CI/CD. For infrastructure pipelines and Infrastructure as Code (IaC), we use Tekton. Previou...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Rational Build Forge
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cars.com
The Home Depot, PayPal, Target, HSBC, McKesson, Oncology Venture
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Tekton and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.