We performed a comparison between Jenkins and Gitlab based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, GitLab comes out ahead of Jenkins. Our reviewers found that installation on Windows is not intuitive and its maintenance can be more demanding.
"The stability is good."
"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."
"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."
"Git hosting has an integration with ACD which is why we liked this solution in the first place."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the ability to upload scripts and make changes when needed and then reupload them. Additionally, the solution is user-friendly."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"We are using the open-source version and there is a lot of plugins and features that are available and it works on agents for free. In other solutions, it will cost extra to use them with the agent."
"The deployment of traditional Jenkins is easy."
"It is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to connect with different tools and technologies."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its integration between different tools."
"It's very easy to learn."
"With Jenkins, the pipeline will take your code from any versioning system like GitHub or Bitbucket. All the security scans can happen in one go and then all the tests also get run. You can just build one container in it and deploy it."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."
"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."
"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."
"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."
"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."
"GitLab would be improved with the addition of templates for deployment on local PCs."
"GitLab's Windows version is yet not available and having this would be an improvement."
"The product should provide more visualization as to how many pipelines are performing and how many builds are happening. It should also integrate with Kubernetes and OpenShift."
"There is no way for the cloud repositories to trigger Jenkins."
"Jenkins could have better cloud functionality. Currently, we are using the existing legacy model, but we are moving toward the cloud, so it would be great if they could improve in that area. In the future, I would like more cloud features and related training materials, like a video tutorial."
"Sometimes, random errors of metadata are not there, which causes delays. These are essentially gaps in the information being passed to the job."
"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."
"They need to improve their documentation."
"It does not have a very user-friendly interface."
"We need more licensed product integrations."
GitLab is ranked 1st in Build Automation with 70 reviews while Jenkins is ranked 2nd in Build Automation with 83 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while Jenkins is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Jenkins writes "A highly-scalable and stable solution that reduces deployment time and produces a significant return on investment". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline and Veracode, whereas Jenkins is most compared with Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, IBM Rational Build Forge, Harness and Tekton. See our GitLab vs. Jenkins report.
See our list of best Build Automation vendors.
We monitor all Build Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
