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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
22nd
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
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 IBM Rational Build Forge is 2.1%, up from 1.3% 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%
IBM Rational Build Forge2.1%
Other87.2%
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.
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

"I utilized the reporting features and a number of documents, as well as statuses."
"Very good reporting features."
"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."
"In my opinion, this is the best open source solution for CI and CD."
"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."
"The simplicity of Jenkins and the evolving ecosystem of Jenkins are most valuable. Today, you do not have to write a pipeline from scratch. The library functionality of Jenkins helps you to bring all those in ready-made, and you also get the best practices for them. That is a great feature of Jenkins, and that is why it is being used significantly."
"Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable."
"Jenkins is a great tool for continuous integration."
"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 solution is scalable and has a large number of plugins that can help you scale it to your needs."
"Other than that, we're very happy with the product."
 

Cons

"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."
"Its logging can be improved. When something goes wrong, it is not always very easy to find the problem."
"Not user friendly for the layman."
"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."
"The user interface could be updated a little."
"Jenkins is an open-source solution, and people tend to stay on the same version for a long time. When you look for an answer on Google, you often find something that doesn't relate to your implementation. The plugins are both the aspect of Jenkins and also one of the worst because the plugins can have different versions, so it's hard to figure out how to solve the problems."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an Artifactory (Universal artifact repository manager)."
"In our case, we have several products built using Jenkins. It is quite difficult to navigate into the latest stable build in a given OS."
"There is no way for the cloud repositories to trigger Jenkins."
"Centralized user management would be helpful."
"I'd like to see some more features for scriptwriting and a more user-friendly UI for creating pipelines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I used the free OSS version all the time. It was enough for all my needs."
"The solution is open source."
"Jenkins is open source and free."
"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There are no costs or licensing."
"Jenkins is open source."
"Jenkins is a free open-source server."
"It's free software with a big community behind it, which is very good."
"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise14
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?
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

 

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: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.