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GitHub Actions vs Jenkins 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

GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
23
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 August 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 7.0%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 9.9%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins9.9%
GitHub Actions7.0%
Other83.1%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Bharadwaj Deepak Mohapatra - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at ENTERPRISE SYSTEM SOLUTIONS LIMITED
Has supported repository management and demonstrates potential in workflow flexibility
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas concerning deeper capabilities akin to those provided by Jenkins and Azure DevOps. Given the evolving nature of technology, there are potential improvements GitHub Actions can focus on, including enhancing support and reliability to match its competitors.
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

"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."
"It is easy to use, especially if you are accustomed to using GitHub."
"GitHub Actions provides workflows that allow for process automation, enabling operations such as build, deploy, and scale applications."
"It offers numerous built-in features for pipeline management, release management, and even work item tracking on boards, which makes it a versatile tool that seamlessly integrates with hardware and facilitates optimization."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are creating builds, and connecting them with Sonar for Sonar analysis, and additionally we connect it with other vulnerability tools such as WhiteSource which is useful."
"Don't focus on the fact that Jenkins is open source."
"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."
"Distributed execution of build and test jobs."
"My advice to others is this is a tool that will help save time have good coverage for the validation environment and test more hardware capabilities."
"The most beneficial thing is being able to do everything with just one click, which was not possible previously when any changes needed to be carried out manually."
"For business needs, Jenkins is the most relevant choice because it can be self-hosted, the price is good, it’s robust, and requires almost no effort for maintenance."
"Using Jenkins we have configured and automated the complete build procedure."
 

Cons

"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."
"Improvements could be made in terms of time-saving capabilities and resolving potential complexities in centralized workflows."
"The UI could be better."
"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."
"We can leverage this database tool to manage everything within our environment and data burners, allowing for customization and execution. An additional advantage is the capability to modify aspects like file size, making processes more efficient and faster across the pipelines. Regarding improvements or implementations, I believe there should be enhancements made to the deployment tool. It should be integrated as part of the solution. Infrastructure-wise, we already have tools like GitHub and RobSpot, and data enables us to automate various processes, which is quite beneficial. As for further enhancements, I'm uncertain. I've shared everything I know. However, if there's something specific you'd like to see in future releases, a feature that may not exist yet but would be desirable, I can't provide any input on that matter."
"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."
"One area for improvement would be the UI, which currently looks quite outdated and requires the user to go through too many steps."
"The documentation could be more friendly, and more examples of how to use it."
"The documentation is not helpful, as it is not user-friendly."
"Improvement-wise, I would want the solution's user interface to be changed for the better. In short, the solution can be made more user-friendly."
"I would like to have an integrated dashboard on top of it and a better UX to look at. The dashboard could be better in terms of integration with other tools. We should be able to have a single pane of glass across all the tools that we use where Jenkins is the pipeline. This can be a very good upgrade to it."
"The documentation on plugin development could be better: more examples. ​"
"It would help if they offered more integrations."
"Some kind of SaaS product would be helpful in providing organizational structure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"Jenkins is open source."
"​It is free.​"
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"The open-source version is free, but small companies would not be able to afford the cloud-based version."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"It is an open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I would rate pricing a seven, which leans toward the expensive side. However, there is still value for money, and that's why we continue using it.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
While GitHub Actions offers a range of functionalities, it is newer compared to more established tools such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps. There is still room for improvement, especially in areas con...
What is your primary use case for GitHub Actions?
The main use case for GitHub Actions is maintaining enterprise repositories in private for security reasons, because we have multiple enterprise clients. We're using the premium GitHub service for ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox
Find out what your peers are saying about GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.