Jenkins
Open SourceBuild great things at any scale.
Published 16 October 2026
Scores
Popularity4/5
Among the most widely used CI/CD tools in industry surveys, known well beyond DevOps circles, although new projects choose it less often than they used to.
Learning Curve4/5
Getting a first job running is quick, but production use means learning the controller and agent model, plugins, credentials, Groovy pipelines, and ongoing administration.
Flexibility5/5
Plugins and Groovy pipelines cover almost any workflow, any code host, and any build tool, and agents can run anywhere, from a VM to a Kubernetes cluster.
Performance3/5
Throughput depends entirely on the machines you attach. The single controller and heavy plugins can slow a large instance, so scale-out needs deliberate design.
Portability5/5
MIT licensed software you host anywhere, with pipelines as plain files in the repository. Groovy pipelines and plugin-specific steps need some rewriting to move to another CI system.
About Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source automation server written in Java and used to build, test, and deploy software on infrastructure you control. It is one of the oldest and most widely used CI/CD tools, and it stays common in companies that run their own servers, work on-premises or in air-gapped networks, or need pipelines that hosted services cannot express.
A Jenkins installation has a controller that holds the configuration, schedules jobs, and serves the web interface, and agents that run the builds, on other machines, in containers, or on Kubernetes. Pipelines are written as code in a Jenkinsfile that lives in the repository, in a declarative syntax for common cases or in Groovy for full control. Jenkins is not tied to any code host: it builds from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or any Git server, triggered by webhooks or polling.
The main strength is its plugin ecosystem, with more than 2,300 community plugins for source control, build tools, cloud platforms, notifications, and security scanning. The cost of that freedom is upkeep: plugins and Jenkins itself need regular updates, the controller is a single point of failure unless you plan around it, and the setup is more hands-on than in a hosted service.
Jenkins is MIT licensed and free, governed by the Continuous Delivery Foundation under the Linux Foundation, with Long-Term Support and weekly release lines. Companies such as CloudBees sell commercial distributions and support, but there is no Jenkins-hosted cloud. It is usually run in Docker or on a VPS from a provider such as Hetzner or DigitalOcean.
Key Features
- Pipeline as code with a Jenkinsfile, declarative or Groovy
- More than 2,300 community plugins
- Controller and agent architecture for distributed builds
- Builds from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or any Git server
- Agents on static machines, Docker containers, or Kubernetes
- Runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS, and as a Docker image
- Long-Term Support releases alongside weekly releases
- MIT licensed with no paid tier required
Pros
- Free, MIT licensed, and fully self-hosted, so code and credentials stay on your servers
- Extremely flexible, with a plugin for almost every tool in a delivery pipeline
- Not tied to any code host or cloud
- Huge community, documentation, and hiring pool
- Handles complex, on-premises, and air-gapped setups that hosted services cannot
Cons
- You run the controller, its updates, and its backups yourself
- Plugin sprawl creates upgrade and security work
- The interface and Groovy pipelines feel dated next to newer tools
- Single controller is a bottleneck unless you design around it
- Steeper to set up than GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD
Jenkins Pricing
Open SourceTools Related to Jenkins
Integrates with Jenkins(1)
The Kubernetes plugin lets Jenkins start each build agent as a pod in a cluster and remove it afterwards, so a single controller can scale builds on demand without permanent agent machines.
Alternatives to Jenkins(3)
Both can run on servers you control at no cost. Jenkins is a separate automation server with 2,300+ plugins that works with any code host; GitLab CI/CD is built into GitLab alongside repositories and registries, and only builds GitLab projects.
Jenkins is self-hosted, open source, and independent of any code host, with pipelines in a Jenkinsfile and 2,300+ plugins. GitHub Actions needs no server, runs on GitHub-hosted machines, and has a large marketplace, but only builds GitHub repositories.
Jenkins is free, open-source, and self-hosted, with 2,300+ plugins and full control, but you maintain the controller and its plugins. CircleCI is a hosted service that removes that maintenance and bills in credits, with config in a single YAML file.