Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GitLab CI VS Jenkins

Compare GitLab CI VS Jenkins and see what are their differences

GitLab CI logo GitLab CI

GitLab has integrated CI to test, build and deploy your code

Jenkins logo Jenkins

Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development
  • GitLab CI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-29
  • Jenkins Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-15

GitLab CI features and specs

  • Integrated Platform
    GitLab CI seamlessly integrates with GitLab's suite of tools, providing a unified platform for SCM, CI/CD, and project management, simplifying workflows.
  • Ease of Use
    The system is user-friendly, with easy setup and configuration through the `.gitlab-ci.yml` file, offering straightforward pipeline definitions.
  • Scalability
    GitLab CI is designed to handle projects of any size, from small businesses to large enterprises, accommodating growth and increased demand efficiently.
  • Extensive Documentation
    There is rich documentation available, which helps users quickly get up to speed and troubleshoot, contributing to easier adoption and problem-solving.
  • Multi-platform Support
    Supports running CI/CD tasks on various platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS, providing flexibility in deployment environments.

Possible disadvantages of GitLab CI

  • Resource Consumption
    Running GitLab CI can be resource-intensive, potentially requiring significant computing power for large projects and complex pipelines, which can increase costs.
  • Complexity for Beginners
    For users new to CI/CD, the system can initially seem complex, particularly when dealing with advanced configurations and custom scripts.
  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to competitors, GitLab CI may have a less extensive ecosystem of third-party integrations and plugins, potentially limiting flexibility.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report performance bottlenecks, especially when dealing with large repositories or concurrent pipelines, which can slow down operations.
  • Security Concerns
    As with any integrated platform that handles source code and deployment, there are security risks if the system is not configured properly.

Jenkins features and specs

  • Open Source
    Jenkins is an open-source tool, which means users can modify, share, and use it without licensing fees.
  • Large Plugin Ecosystem
    Jenkins has a robust plugin ecosystem with over 1,500 plugins, allowing extensive customization and functionality to fit various DevOps needs.
  • Active Community
    The active and large community of Jenkins users and developers provides extensive support, documentation, and shared solutions.
  • Platform Independent
    Jenkins can run on various platforms including Windows, macOS, and various Unix-like systems, providing flexibility in deployment.
  • CI/CD Capabilities
    Jenkins is well-suited for implementing Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, facilitating automated build, test, and deployment processes.
  • Scalability
    It supports distributed builds using Master-Slave architecture, enabling you to scale your build and deployment processes across multiple machines.
  • Extensible
    Thanks to its plugin architecture, Jenkins can be extended to integrate with a variety of tools and services, making it highly adaptable.

Possible disadvantages of Jenkins

  • Complex Setup
    Initial setup and configuration of Jenkins can be complicated, especially for new users or large-scale environments.
  • Resource Intensive
    Jenkins can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and CPU, particularly for large projects or high-frequency builds.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Due to its extensive plugin usage, keeping Jenkins and its plugins updated can be time-consuming and sometimes problematic.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Learning to use Jenkins effectively can have a steep learning curve, particularly due to the need to understand its various plugins and configuration options.
  • User Interface
    The user interface of Jenkins is sometimes considered outdated and not as intuitive or user-friendly as some of its modern counterparts.
  • Security Vulnerabilities
    As with many open-source tools, Jenkins can have security vulnerabilities that need to be regularly addressed to ensure a secure environment.
  • Poor Plugin Compatibility
    Not all plugins are maintained equally, leading to potential compatibility issues or bugs when using multiple plugins together.

GitLab CI videos

Gitlab CI pipeline tutorial for beginners

More videos:

  • Tutorial - GitLab CI/CD Pipeline | GitLab CI/CD Tutorial | Gitlab Tutorial | DevOps Training | Edureka

Jenkins videos

Mick Jenkins - The Circus Album Review | DEHH

More videos:

  • Review - Mick Jenkins - The Water[s] ALBUM REVIEW
  • Review - Mick Jenkins - THE WATERS First REACTION/REVIEW

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GitLab CI and Jenkins)
Continuous Integration
DevOps Tools
5 5%
95% 95
Continuous Deployment
6 6%
94% 94
Dev Ops
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GitLab CI and Jenkins

GitLab CI Reviews

Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
GitLab CI is a part of GitLab. It is a web application with an API that stores its state in a database. It is one of the best Ansible analogs that manages projects and provides a friendly user interface, besides offering the advantage of all the features of GitLab.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
GitLab CI/CD replicates much of Jenkins’ functionality but from a slightly different viewpoint. It’s less complex, yet simultaneously more dependent on manual configuration—GitLab’s catalog of prebuilt pipeline components remains a young beta. However, GitLab CI/CD also has several standout features including the ability to automatically run appropriate build, test, and...
Source: spacelift.io
15 Best Jenkins Alternatives (Open Source & Paid) in 2021
GitLab CI is a part of GitLab. It is a web application with an API that stores its state in a database. It manages projects and provides a friendly user interface, besides offering the advantage of all the features of GitLab.
Source: www.guru99.com

Jenkins Reviews

The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
Jenkins X, a new kind of Jenkins made for cloud environments and modern development practices, tries to make setting up and handling CI/CD pipelines easier. It uses Kubernetes along with GitOps ideas in order to offer teams working on cloud-native apps an automated way that is less complex when it comes to managing their project’s lifecycle.
Source: morninglif.com
Top 5 Jenkins Alternatives in 2024: Automation of IT Infrastructure Written by Uzair Ghalib on the 02nd Jan 2024
If you have searched about Jenkins alternatives and you are reading this article, then there must be one of the three reasons you are here. You are already using Jenkins and are fed up with facing different issues and looking for a change. Or maybe you haven’t faced any issues yet but have heard the stories about Jenkins issues and looking to avoid them by choosing an...
Source: attuneops.io
What Are The Best Alternatives To Ansible? | Attune, Jenkins &, etc.
Jenkin is a popular tool for performing continuous integration of software projects in the market. Plus, it continues the delivery of projects regardless of the platform you’re working on. And it is also responsible for handling any build or continuous integration with various testing and development technologies. As a product, Jenkins is more developer-centric and...
Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration tool. It is written using the Java programming language. It facilitates real-time testing and reporting on isolated changes in a larger code base. This software similar to Ansible helps developers to quickly find and solve defects in their code base & automate testing of their builds.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 10 Most Popular Jenkins Alternatives for DevOps in 2024
Jenkins may be a de-facto tool for CI/CD, but it’s no longer a shiny newcomer borne directly out of modern DevOps best practices. Although Jenkins is still relevant, newer tools can offer improved ergonomics and expanded functionality. These can be better suited to contemporary software delivery methods.
Source: spacelift.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Jenkins should be more popular than GitLab CI. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GitLab CI mentions (3)

  • Github Actions to deploy your Terraform code
    Github Actions has many competitors in its category that allow you to run all kinds of code running on containers, such as Gitlab, Jenkins, CircleCI, etc. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Top 10 Software Deployment Tools for 2022
    GitLab CI is a complete open-source DevOps platform, delivered as a single application, fundamentally changing how development, security, and ops teams collaborate and build software. GitLab helps teams to improve cycle time from weeks to minutes while reducing development process costs and decreasing time to market. This tool greatly enhances developer productivity. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • A Developer's Guide to GitOps
    In modern CI systems, like the ones most commonly used to power GitOps like CircleCI, Github Actions, Gitlab CI, etc., the configurations powering the pipelines live directly in the Git repository. Just like the source code for the application, these configurations are version controlled and visible to every developer working on the project. Not only can they see what the pipeline process is, but they can also... - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago

Jenkins mentions (7)

  • CircleCI vs. Jenkins
    Jenkins is an open-source automation server used for software continuous integration and delivery. It automates various tasks, such as building, testing, and deploying applications.  It is easily extendable due to its vast ecosystem of plugins, making it easy to integrate into version control systems like Git, build tools like Maven/Gradle, and deployment platforms like AWS and Docker. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Automated delivery React / Vue app for each Pull Request.
    It will give you a possibility to find and solve problems faster, release more stable and higher quality products. Here we will use CircleCI, but you can use whatever you need (Jenkins, Travis CI, GitLab CI). - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Is Jenkins dead? v2
    CloudBees Jenkins Platform is a commercial offering from CloudBees, it is not the Jenkins project itself (which is open source). Jenkins is alive and well. See https://jenkins.io. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • ELI5 what is Jenkins?
    Ok. I'm talking about this: https://jenkins.io/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • I wanted a self hosted alternative to Atlassian status page so I build my own application !
    Currently supported : Datadog, Jenkins, DNS, HTTP. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GitLab CI and Jenkins, you can also consider the following products

Bitrise - Tens of thousands of agencies, startups and enterprise companies with mobile apps - including Runkeeper, Grindr, Duolingo and more - use Bitrise to automate their way to increased productivity & speed

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.

Codeship - Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Delivery platform that scales with your needs.

Shippable - Add continuous integration and deployment to your GitHub repositories in a few minutes.

Travis CI - Simple, flexible, trustworthy CI/CD tools. Join hundreds of thousands who define tests and deployments in minutes, then scale up simply with parallel or multi-environment builds using Travis CI’s precision syntax—all with the developer in mind.

Bitbucket Pipelines - Bitbucket Pipelines brings continuous integration and delivery to Bitbucket cloud, empowering teams to build, test, and deploy their code.