IBM Rational Build Forge vs Jenkins comparison

IBM and Jenkins are both solutions in the Build Automation category. IBM is ranked #24, while Jenkins is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 0.8% mindshare in BA, compared to Jenkins’s 10.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Jenkins users who would recommend it.

IBM Rational Build Forge

Read 2 IBM Rational Build Forge reviews

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379 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Read 92 Jenkins reviews

3,555 Views
3,484 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

IBM Rational Build Forge

Jenkins

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM Rational Build Forge and Jenkins compete in automation and build management. Jenkins is favored for its flexibility, open-source nature, and strong community support. IBM Rational Build Forge gains traction with robust enterprise support and integration, appealing to those with IBM ecosystems.

Features: IBM Rational Build Forge integrates with IBM software, offers advanced scheduling, and automation for large enterprises. Jenkins provides a vast array of plugins for customization and extensibility, alongside a strong open-source community that drives improvements and updates. The key distinction is IBM's enterprise-focused features compared to Jenkins's extensive plugin ecosystem and flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Rational Build Forge offers comprehensive support and structured deployment for enterprises, providing tailored assistance. Jenkins, being open-source, relies on community support, offering varied experiences. IBM's deployment model suits enterprise environments, while Jenkins's approach provides flexibility and adaptability.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Rational Build Forge involves higher setup costs due to its enterprise-level offerings and support services, promising substantial ROI for IBM tool suite users. Jenkins benefits from being open-source, reducing initial costs, leading to quicker ROI through flexibility and community enhancements. Jenkins is cost-effective for smaller to medium-sized enterprises seeking scalable solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins

July 2025

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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

IBM Rational Build Forge

Ranking in Build Automation

24th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Jenkins

Ranking in Build Automation

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 0.8%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.3%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

it_user1330545

CRM Program Release Manager at Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center

Great reporting features and very functional

The solution could be more user friendly. Trying to train somebody on it can be difficult. If you're in this field, you kind of learn the tools, but trying to show a PM how to find report sheets to pull data was difficult. I had to show them how to write the queries and pull the data that they needed. It's not a layman's solution. If you're working with a programmer or with an architect, you won't have issues trying to relay how to utilize the tool. It was for those who cut the checks where there were problems enabling them to pull the data they required. I guess the answer is DevOps, but it depends on your environment. Just being able to sign into dashboards and get accurate results was my biggest thing with my PMs on my projects. They like charts and pie graphs, the ability to see things at a glance data where they could make decisions on the fly.

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Annamalai Pts

DevOps Engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

Streamlined CI/CD pipelines with powerful integration and an easy setup

I use Jenkins as a CI/CD tool. We create pipelines using Jenkins, with stages for Maven builds, Docker image builds, SonarQube integration, and deploying the image to a Kubernetes cluster, AWS EKS Jenkins has made the developers' work very easy. They commit to the remote repository, and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Very good reporting features."

"All features are useful. Our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool. It works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."

"We really appreciate that this solution is plug and play. When coding in the version control system, this product completes the build process automatically."

"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate. There is a large user base to provide community support, which I find very valuable. If I need to find a better way to do something, I can always get help from the community. Automation is about thinking outside of the box, and other users are constantly adding new plugins."

"Jenkins has excellent task planning features."

"I am not aware of the available options in the market right now compared to Jenkins, but I am pretty much happy with the service that Jenkins is providing our company."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to connect with different tools and technologies."

"This solution has helped us in automating the build and test process, reducing time."

"Also, the ability to customize these plugins is valuable. Its user-friendliness stands out, especially in its user interface which allows easy installation and configuration."

"Jenkins's automation and orchestration features have significantly improved workflows by automating various processes. Initially, it did not support YAML manifesting or GitOps, but recent versions have introduced these capabilities. Now, the tool supports importing manifest files from Git repositories, enabling the implementation of GitOps pipelines. Compared to other tools like GitLab, it has become a mature tool for running CI/CD pipelines."

More Jenkins pros

Cons

"Not user friendly for the layman."

"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem. It is hard to identify whether the problem is because of low memory in the server or some configuration in Rational Build Forge. The error logs are not very detailed, and they should provide more information. It should also have more integration with third-party tools. It would be great to have more integration with third-party tools."

"The UI of Jenkins could improve."

"Jenkins can sometimes run slow, especially when restarting after a plugin installation or when returning from a pipeline view to the dashboard."

"They need to improve their documentation."

"For this solution to be a 10, it has to be a lot more stable. Maybe the public version of Jenkins is stable, but in our case it's not stable."

"The upgrades need improvement."

"A more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines would be helpful."

"The solution's UI can use a facelift and the logs can use more detailed information."

"Centralized user management would be helpful."

More Jenkins cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Jenkins is an open-source tool."

"We use the tool's open-source version which is free. There is an enterprise version which is expensive but comes with better support."

"Some of the add-ons are too expensive."

"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."

"It could be cheaper because there are many solutions available in the market. We are paying yearly."

"Jenkins is a free solution, it is open source."

"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 open-source, so it is free."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user184734

Systems Administrator at Facebook

Jan 22, 2015

I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.

Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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...

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What do you like most about Jenkins?

Jenkins has been instrumental in automating our build and deployment processes.

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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.

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Comparisons

No data available

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Tekton vs Jenkins

Compared 7% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs Jenkins

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

July 2025

Download IBM Rational Build Forge product report

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

August 2025

Download Jenkins product report

Also Known As

Rational Build Forge

No data available

Overview

IBM Rational Build Forge is an adaptive execution framework that helps automate and standardize the software assembly process. Rational Build Forge helps teams standardize repetitive tasks, improve software quality and manage compliance mandates. This software scales to 25 seats. Rational Build Forge delivers:
Flexibility - gives developers self-service access to preconfigured build processes from within their integrated development environment (IDE). You can add IBM Rational software products to further enhance automation, reporting and integration.
Productivity - accelerates build and release cycles through iterative development, parallel processes and efficient use of hardware.
Compliance - simplifies compliance management with self-documenting audit trails and role-based security.
Compatibility - increases team efficiency with centralized build and release management using the tools you have today.

IBM

Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron.

Jenkins

Sample Customers

Cars.com

Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox

Buyer's Guide

IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins

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