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IBM Rational Build Forge vs Jenkins comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
2
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 September 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Jenkins is 10.0%, up from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jenkins10.0%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.0%
Other88.0%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1538124 - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops and SAFe Specialist at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Useful features, stable, easy to deploy, and works well
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.
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

"I utilized the reporting features and a number of documents, as well as statuses."
"All features are useful; our customer doesn't have any complaints about the tool, and it works pretty well for what they want and what they need to do."
"Very good reporting features."
"Jenkins is the most popular automation engine in the world."
"Has enabled full automation of the company."
"Jenkins is the most widely used development tool, so there are many plugins and it's easy to integrate."
"The solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."
"The most valuable features of Jenkins are its ease of use and good plugins available, and you are able to connect to a lot of solutions."
"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."
"Don't focus on the fact that Jenkins is open source."
"Jenkins is very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem."
"The solution could be more user friendly."
"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."
"Not user friendly for the layman."
"It does not have a very user-friendly interface."
"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."
"I think the logs could be improved so that anyone using the build for the first time gets a better view as to how it's performing, what the data is, and what processing is occurring."
"There are some difficulties when we need to execute the DB script."
"We sometimes face challenges during version upgrades, such as failures when migrating Kubernetes versions."
"Jenkins can improve by continuing to add additional plugins for all the new solutions that are coming out within the cloud sphere."
"Tasks such as deployment, cloning, database switchover, and all other database missions and tasks are being done through Jenkins. If a job does not go through, at times the error message does not clearly indicate what caused the failure. I have to escalate it to the Jenkins DevOps team just to see what caused the failure. If the error message is clear, then I wouldn't have to escalate the issue to different teams."
"The documentation on plugin development could be better: more examples. ​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Jenkins is open source."
"Jenkins is an open-source tool."
"Jenkins is open-source, so it is free."
"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 a free open-source server."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"It is an open source."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise58
 

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...
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.
 

Also Known As

Rational Build Forge
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cars.com
Airial, Clarus Financial Technology, cubetutor, Metawidget, mysocio, namma, silverpeas, Sokkva, So Rave, tagzbox
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational Build Forge vs. Jenkins and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.