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.
"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."
"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"Automation of chores like deployment, frequent manual tasks (like running scripts on test and production systems) reduced the time used and the number of errors made by engineers, freeing them to do meaningful work instead."
"It has a lot of community posts and support."
"The automated elements are easy to use and you can put them into your server."
"Jenkins is very stable."
"We significantly reduced build times of large projects (more than 80k lines of Scala code) using build time on Jenkins as a time sample. It reduced the developer write-test-commit cycle time, and increased productivity."
"We can schedule anything with Jenkins, which is useful for deployment or anything that requires scheduling. It also has multiple plugins we can use for Maven, JUnit, etc."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"Jenkins is very user-friendly."
"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."
"GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc."
"Merge conflicts and repository maintenance could improve. If there is someone new to the system they would not know if there is a conflict."
"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."
"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."
"Their RBAC is role-based access, which is fine but not very good."
"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."
"Jenkins relies on the old version of interface for configuration management. This needs improvement."
"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."
"Jenkins could improve by adding the ability to edit test automation and make time planning better because it is difficult. It should be easier to do."
"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."
"Logging could be improved to offer a clearer view."
"The support for the latest Java Runtime Environment should be improved."
"Performance-wise. This needs to be improved. Not only performance-wise, some functionality or some features can be added to Jenkins."
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.
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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.