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GitHub Actions vs Jenkins comparison

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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
5.2
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Jenkins
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 6.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.7%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.7%
GitHub Actions6.7%
Other82.6%
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.
HG
Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Automated pipelines have halved deployment time and allow developers to focus only on coding
The best features that Jenkins offers me are high customizability along with the support of Groovy language, which allows me to write my own functions and logic to deploy applications and configure the pipeline according to my use case. Its high integration capability with many plugins is also a significant advantage. For example, we have certain cloud functions running on Google Cloud Run, and we deploy those in the form of containers. Jenkins is highly integratable with Docker through plugins, so we installed those plugins in Jenkins and provided the credentials and logic for execution. Additionally, we have a Bitbucket environment and AWS deployments where we also use Jenkins' strong AWS plugins to deploy resources effectively. Thanks to these plugins, it's easy to deploy rather than creating custom logic. I have covered pretty much everything about the features of Jenkins.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It saves a lot of time with GitHub Actions; especially, the whole process if done manually might cost us a lot, maybe a week or two weeks just for deployment, but now with automation, we automate the deployment effectively."
"The level of automation achievable is really good. So, the custom workflow creation and Marketplace Actions improved our project's efficiency."
"The main benefit is collaboration. It allows us to easily collaborate with other developers, regardless of location. For example, we can collaborate with both our African and German colleagues seamlessly. It's platform-agnostic, so it is flexible and not tied to any OS, so we can work on Linux, Windows, web, and even Oracle applications. It's flexible, reliable, and overall an excellent tool for our needs."
"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."
"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."
"GitHub Actions helps automate the deployment process, eliminating manual copying and testing, which saves time and minimizes errors."
"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 GitHub Actions is the ability to automate various tasks, such as backups and deployments, to ease the development workflow."
"Jenkins is a great solution if you're looking at automation because it reduces manual work and improves performance."
"Jenkins appeared to be a good alternative to become parallel infrastructure purely dedicated for testing."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are the integration with GitHub, and the automation for deployment."
"The deploying and assessing of the development of our code and our application has been really useful, it's getting a bit easier for us to use Jenkins, and it is really helping us."
"Jenkins has greatly improved the time it takes to deliver a software package to the market."
"Do it! There's really no way you can lose."
"This is a great integration tool and very powerful."
"I would recommend Jenkins to anyone thinking of implementing it into their organization."
 

Cons

"We still use Jenkins for some tasks, which suggests there may be areas for improvement in GitHub Actions."
"There is a part that detects outdated libraries. If that feature could be more intuitive and informative, that would be nice."
"The UI could be better."
"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."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"In our company, procedures or rules need to be completed, which is not a problem with GitHub Actions but with our process."
"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."
"The pricing is high for the advanced security; GitHub Advanced Security for us is quite pricey."
"There are some issues with Jenkins, especially with the SIP job."
"The UI must be more user-friendly."
"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 is not an easy solution to use and the configuration is not simple. They can improve the solution by adding a graphical interface that is more user-friendly."
"Sometimes you have Jenkins restarting because of OOM errors."
"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market."
"Centralized user management would be helpful."
"If I had to name something, I'd like to see more on the cloud, cloud integration, like to Amazon and Google."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"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."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"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."
"This is an open-source solution for the basic features. However, if an organization wishes to include specific functionality, outside of the basic package, there are extra costs involved."
"Jenkins is an open-source platform."
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"There is no cost. It is open source."
"The solution is open source."
"It is an open source."
"Jenkins is open source."
"Jenkins is an open-source tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise14
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?
We are using a community version of Jenkins and did not purchase it through the AWS Marketplace. The main cost for using Jenkins is related to the server it is hosted on and the allocated capacity....
What needs improvement with Jenkins?
Jenkins has many outdated plugins, and several are paid, which can be unnecessary. Better plugin maintainability is needed, and given the AI advancements today, AI support in Jenkins would be benef...
 

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: November 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.