Jenkins vs Tekton comparison

Jenkins and Google are both solutions in the Build Automation category. Jenkins is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.1, while Google is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8. Jenkins holds a 10.5% mindshare in BA, compared to Google’s 11.7% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Jenkins users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Google users who would recommend it.

Jenkins

Read 93 Jenkins reviews

3,625 Views
2,329 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Tekton

Read 36 Tekton reviews

4,231 Views
2,047 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Jenkins

Tekton

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Jenkins and Tekton are prominent competitors in the CI/CD tool category. Jenkins, with its extensive plugin ecosystem and strong community support, holds the advantage for customization. Tekton, however, has the edge in Kubernetes-native environments due to its seamless cloud-native integration.

Features: Jenkins provides a massive plugin ecosystem, pipeline integration capabilities, and scalability across various use cases. Tekton excels with its Kubernetes-native design enabling container-based application flexibility, efficient CI/CD pipeline management, and seamless scalability within cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Jenkins could improve its user interface, plugin stability, and support better cloud integration documentation. Tekton needs to enhance its deployment accessibility, standardize template creation, and improve YAML configuration management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Jenkins offers diverse deployment options, including on-premises and various cloud settings, but often needs internal expertise for troubleshooting. Community support is robust but lacks formal customer service. Tekton suits hybrid and cloud settings well, aligning with Kubernetes, which demands more cloud-native configuration expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Jenkins is open-source, providing free access but requiring management for add-ons, leading to cost savings through automation. Tekton, also free and open-source, offers additional savings through resource-efficient management and integration with platforms like Kubernetes, enhancing ROI by reducing operational costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Jenkins vs. Tekton Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins vs. Tekton

June 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

Jenkins

Ranking in Build Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tekton

Ranking in Build Automation

2nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Jenkins is 10.5%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tekton is 11.7%, up from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Mahdi Mallaki

Senior Devops Engineer at Rakuten

Has a community of plugin providers but needs improvement in Kubernetes integration

Integrating Jenkins with other tools or solutions has presented some challenges. For instance, when attempting to integrate Jenkins with Kubernetes, I encountered numerous errors, which took several days to resolve. In Jenkins, adding a feature typically involves incorporating the repository feature separately. Jenkins lacks built-in Git repository functionality, necessitating an external Git repository to store Jenkins manifests. In contrast, GitLab offers an integrated Git repository and pipeline runner, streamlining the process. One improvement for Jenkins could be integrating a Git server, simplifying the management of CI/CD pipelines. Currently, with Jenkins, modifying pipeline manifests requires navigating to a separate Git repository. In GitLab, however, manifest changes can be made directly within the repository.

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AjayKrishna

Senior Software Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

If you're dealing with many applications and need a reliable, scalable, and efficient system, I'd recommend this solution

Tekton's most important feature is its cloud-native nature. Unlike Jenkins, which may not scale as efficiently, Tekton's CI pipeline can automatically scale up to handle increased workload demands without needing manual adjustments. Another important aspect is the level of customization offered by Tekton. Each task in the CI pipeline can be customized independently, allowing developers to write code in various languages like shell scripting, Java, or Python and incorporate them into the pipeline as needed. This level of abstraction and customization greatly benefits developers in creating efficient CI pipelines. Also, it can be challenging to understand the logs and troubleshoot issues without clear guidance. It's not always easy to reach technical support and get immediate answers. In my opinion, improvement in this area would be beneficial.

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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

"It is a stable solution."

"It's a powerful tool for CI/CD."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that there are multiple features. We can abstract certain variables and then build our deployment routine while being able to do some abstraction onto the SSH connections."

"With Jenkins, the pipeline will take your code from any versioning system like GitHub or Bitbucket. All the security scans can happen in one go and then all the tests also get run. You can just build one container in it and deploy it."

"I love Jenkins. I like that you work on anything, and you make anything. Jenkins is very important for my team. I am satisfied with the product."

"Continuous Integration. Jenkins can integrate with almost any systems used for application development and testing, with its plugins."

"Jenkins optimizes the CI/CD process, enhances automation, and ensures efficiency and management of our build and deployment pipeline."

"Has a good interface, is reliable and saves time."

More Jenkins pros

"The tool offers flexibility and compatibility."

"The installation process is seamless, requiring fewer resources compared to Jenkins."

"It enables enterprises to build a flexible framework atop Tekton, making it easier to define workflows with standard inputs and outputs."

"The tool's most valuable aspect is its compatibility with the cloud-native environment. It can be easily installed on Kubernetes and leverages its resources to run CI/CD pipelines."

"One of the best things I appreciate is that Tekton runs on the Kubernetes platform. This is very useful when working on a project with other team members. For instance, suppose we have a very big project that requires building a large amount of source code or running many unit tests. During the build and unit test phases, Tekton on Kubernetes allows us to have a scalable machine to handle these tasks. This scalability is the most useful aspect for me."

"I would say the customization ability that Tekton provides is good."

"We can make a lot of customizations, and data sharing between tasks using workspaces is very convenient."

"When you run a pipeline, all the jobs are called. It is a very valuable feature that enhances job maintenance overall."

More Tekton pros

Cons

"The documentation could be more friendly, and more examples of how to use it."

"There is no way for the cloud repositories to trigger Jenkins."

"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."

"I would like them to provide space for people to have a central node that stores all the logs of workspace information in a distributed fashion to facilitate backup and restoration. Currently, everything is stored on one node, so you need to set up distributed storage or an endpoint that you can use for backing up your information."

"Performance-wise. This needs to be improved. Not only performance-wise, some functionality or some features can be added to Jenkins."

"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."

"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."

"Jenkins is an old product, and we encounter performance issues and slow response. Also, some of the plugins are not stable."

More Jenkins cons

"Tekton could improve by adding better documentation."

"Configuring Tekton requires a deep understanding of Kubernetes, which can be difficult for developers."

"Tekton should include many features to integrate event-driven pipelines."

"It tends to occupy a significant amount of disk space on the node, which could potentially pose challenges."

"Incorporating AI could be a potential enhancement in the future."

"It would be better if Tekton could show the YAML file while it is running, similar to GitHub pipelines, to provide more visibility on what's happening."

"While Tekton is highly effective for Kubernetes-based setups, it might not suit users who require more control over bare-metal environments."

"For infrastructure deployment, integration is somewhat complex, especially when using Terraform with Tekton. It would be beneficial if this process were simplified."

More Tekton cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"It is a free product."

"Jenkins is not expensive and reasonably priced."

"It is an open source."

"Jenkins is open source and free."

"We are using the free version of Jenkins. There is not a license required to use the solution because it is open-source."

"The solution is open source."

"In our company, we do pay for the licensing of the solution."

More Jenkins pricing and cost advice

"Tekton is an open-source tool."

"The solution is open-source."

"The product is free and open-source."

"The tool is open-source and free to use."

"The product is free of cost."

"It is entirely open source and free of charge."

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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

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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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What do you like most about Tekton?

Its seamless integration with Kubernetes, being built on top of it and utilizing Custom Resource Definitions, ensures a smooth experience within Kubernetes environments exclusively.

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What needs improvement with Tekton?

Regarding areas for improvement in Tekton, I have not encountered significant issues. It works well for our use case. However, incorporating AI could be a potential enhancement in the future.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Tekton?

Tekton is used as a Kubernetes native tool for creating CI/CD pipelines. It is used for creating multiple tasks that can run as pipeline runs for several services. This helps in reducing time wasta...

See all answers

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Compared 25% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Bamboo vs Tekton

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins

June 2025

Download Jenkins product report

Buyer's Guide

Tekton

June 2025

Download Tekton product report

Overview

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

Jenkins

Tekton is a powerful yet flexible Kubernetes-native open-source framework for creating continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) systems. It lets you build, test, and deploy across multiple cloud providers or on-premises systems by abstracting away the underlying implementation details.

Google

Sample Customers

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

The Home Depot, PayPal, Target, HSBC, McKesson, Oncology Venture

Buyer's Guide

Jenkins vs. Tekton

June 2025

Free Report: Jenkins vs. Tekton

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