GitLab vs. Jenkins vs. CircleCI: Which CI/CD Tool Is the Best?

A CI/CD tool is a software that automates the software development stages to speed up the software delivery and improve product quality.
This article compares GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI in detail.
It covers a review of the features offered and third-party integration details to help you choose the best CI/CD tool.

What Is a CI/CD Tool?
Comparison Between GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI
Features of GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI
GitLab vs. Jenkins vs. CircleCI: Which One to Choose?

What Is a CI/CD Tool?

CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous deployment (or continuous delivery). CI/CD tools are software solutions that automate the building, testing, and deployment of software applications.

Continuous integration refers to the practice of merging all code changes into a shared repository regularly, which triggers automated tests to ensure that the changes do not break the build. This helps in catching and fixing errors early in the development process.

CI/CD Pipeline ExplainedÂ

Source: Spiceworks

CI/CD tools aid in optimizing the product development process by facilitating the seamless integration of new features and enhancing bug resolution. These tools also enable developers to generate comprehensive documentation of the entire deployment process, which helps in streamlining and improving the efficiency of software development.

Implementing a CI/CD tool offers various benefits, such as improved visibility of measurable progress in software development, shorter review cycles, and decreased overall risk, among others. In the sections that follow, we will be reviewing three popular CI/CD tools: GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI, based on their features, strength, and usage.

See More: Top 10 CI/CD Tools in 2022

GitLab

GitLab is a popular CI/CD tool that automates the software development and testing process to streamline the entire flow and speed up software delivery. It offers a dedicated pipeline configuration and artifact storage solution to facilitate smarter coding and improved performance in diverse environments. This also helps improve the release pipeline.

Project Overview Details

(â€‹â€‹Screenshot Captured from GitLab)Â

With over 100,000 users, GitLab is even used by leading organizations such as Sony, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and NASA, to name a few.

Jenkins

Jenkins is a well-known open-source CI/CD tool that helps shorten the development cycle through task automation and improves overall software quality while speeding up the delivery process. It ensures that your code is completely valid and up to date. Jenkins is highly useful for CI/CD implementation, especially in large organizations, to avoid any possible code conflicts and to simplify complex troubleshooting.Â

Jenkins Build History

(â€‹â€‹Screenshot Captured from Jenkins)Â

Jenkins has 100,000+ users from around the world, including leading names such as Facebook, Netflix, Instacart, LinkedIn, and Twitch, among many others.Â

CircleCI

CircleCI is another popular name that crops up when there is a discussion about the top CI/CD tools. Equipped with a dedicated API and hundreds of orbs (reusable packages of CircleCI configuration), this CI/CD platform is preferred by over 1 million engineers around the globe.

CircleCI Dashboard

(â€‹â€‹Screenshot Captured from CircleCI)Â

Be it accelerating product development speed, timely bug fixing, or discovering new features throughout the development, it offers end-to-end solutions for all. In 2023 itself, 5,543 companies around the world started using CircleCI as a CI/CD tool. Some of its leading users include Stripe, Tokopedia, Lyft, StackShare, and Delivery Hero.

See More: What Is Container Orchestration? Working, Importance, Challenges and Tools

Comparison Between GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI

Feature	GitLab	Jenkins	CircleCI
Code Version Control	Git	Git	Git
Continuous Integration (CI)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Continuous Deployment (CD)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Configuration as Code (CaC)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pipeline Orchestration	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-platform Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Self-hosted	Yes	Yes	No
Cloud-hosted	Yes	Yes	Yes
Automated Testing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Docker Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Kubernetes Support	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	Free and Paid	Free and Open Source	Free and Paid
User Interface	User-friendly, intuitive	Configurable, customizable	User-friendly, intuitive
Git Integration	GitLab has native Git support	Jenkins supports Git through plugins	CircleCI supports Git through webhooks and plugins
Plugin Ecosystem	GitLab has a limited number of plugins	Jenkins has an extensive plugin ecosystem	CircleCI has a growing plugin ecosystem
REST API	Yes	Yes	Yes
Webhooks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Collaboration	Built-in collaboration tools such as merge requests	Collaboration through plugins	Collaboration through integrations
Security	Has built-in security features such as 2FA and SSH keys	Security through plugins	Security through integrations

Features of GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI

Letâ€™s understand the features offered by GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI in detail.

1. CI/CD Implementation

GitLab offers a dedicated solution to automate the coding, deployment, and testing of software. It helps place the required code changes in the proper production stages, resulting in a faster and more efficient software development cycle. Not only is it simple to use and offers high scalability but also lets you set up your own runner with all the required and pre-installed dependencies. This tool lets the members of your project team integrate their daily work and progress seamlessly as well as helps identify errors easily with a high level of automation.
Jenkins offers a robust CI/CD solution through an extensive automation server that can be used as both, a CD hub or a CI server as per specific project requirements. Not only does it help incorporate optimum automation into your software development cycle but also offers a range of plugins to accommodate differential deployment requirements from businesses. Its extensible plugin architecture is suitable for CI/CD deployment for various projects that are medium and large, making it highly sought-after among businesses.
CircleCI provides a compact CI/CD solution while promising industry-grade speed for product delivery. Not only does it cater to your production scalability but simplifies innovation and integration for diverse CI/CD toolchains. Implementing automated CI/CD solutions for multiple environments provides businesses with a competitive edge. Furthermore, it gives you the liberty to define and orchestrate workflows as per your product or overall business goals and lets you deploy with greater control.

Based on the above discussion, CircleCI is the best in terms of CI/CD implementation for offering better control, scalability, and efficiency to cater to specific product requirements.

See More: What is Root-Cause Analysis? Working, Templates, and Examples

2. Third-party Integration

GitLab is equipped with a great integration capacity that allows you to integrate it with a range of tools, plugins, and external services. Starting from Pivotal Tracker to Jira, Campfire, Slack, and others, GitLabâ€™s seamless integration capacity makes it easier for businesses to utilize various tools, including workflow management, testing, and deployment tools, besides others. GitLabâ€™s good integration capability helps enhance its functionality further to aid in CI/CD implementation requirements.
Being a self-contained Java-based program, Jenkins can not only be easily installed on Linux, Windows, macOS, and other Unix-like operating systems but can also be integrated seamlessly with third-party tools, software, and external services. It offers a simple and fast integration workflow. You just need to arrange the third-party tool in the â€˜Toolsâ€™ tab of the â€˜Manage Jenkinsâ€™ area of the administrator console. One of the unique advantages of Jenkins in terms of third-party integration is that you can utilize the required plug-ins from inside a Jenkins build job. The module will automatically establish a correspondence between the third party and the Jenkins build job.
CircleCI comes with an excellent integration capacity, allowing you to build it using preferred tools such as Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab SaaS. It comes with a wide range of pre-built integration packages called orbs that can easily connect any third-party tool/solution with itself. CircleCIâ€™s dedicated webhooks let you easily connect the required applications for real-time events, while its simple-to-use APIs let you create tools to facilitate automated actions within systems. It offers a robust third-party integration solution with 14 categories, including Artifactsâ€Š/â€ŠRegistry, Build, Cloud Platform, Code Analysis, Collaboration, Containers, Deployment, Infra Automation, and KubernetesOpens a new window .

Though GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI all come with a seamless integration capacity, CircleCI is the winner here for having the most advanced feature in terms of third-party integration.

3. Security

GitLab offers a robust security solution that includes:

Container Scanning: Deploying automated tools to compare the contents of each container to a database with a known set of vulnerabilities.
Dependency Scanning: Analyzing a specific project to find out the included software dependencies such as transitive dependencies, upstream dependencies, and others.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Analyzing source code to detect security vulnerabilities that make a system or application vulnerable to attacks.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Analyzing application vulnerabilities through front-ends with simulated attacks.

GitLab also comes with end-to-end solutions for threats, such as:

Unauthorized Access: Unwanted logical or physical access to an application, system, network, data, or other resources.
Data Leaks: Unauthorized and unwanted release of protected, sensitive, or confidential data.Â
Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks: An attack that is meant to make a machine or network inaccessible to the intended users.

GitLab also utilizes HTTPS, Universal SSL, and TLS Strict for data encryption during transition. It even ensures that the data is encrypted at rest through the Google Cloud Platform supporting AES-256.

Jenkins offers a range of dedicated security solutions for administrators, reporters, maintainers, and others. Starting from scanning and reporting security vulnerabilities on time to optimizing systems for further security threats, it offers a 360-degree solution for all. It also supports a range of security models and is equipped with a security realm that conveys the Jenkins environment how and from where to pull usersâ€™ information as required.

Jenkins also conveys information related to which groups/users can access which aspects of Jenkins and up to what extent. This helps detect security vulnerabilities on time and gives better control over them.

CircleCI provides an all-in-one security solution to ensure that optimum security is maintained throughout the building and deployment process. CircleCI is the first CI/CD tool that is compliant with the NIST standards of FedRAMP. Itâ€™s SOC 2 Type II compliant and comes with advanced product security features such as:

Source Code Security: SSH/HTTPS-enabled encrypted communication with your VCS to access source codes.
Config Policies: Ensures strict organizational compliances and standardization for all projects.
Environment Variables: Provides impenetrable protection to all sensitive and confidential data.
OpenID Connect: Strict authentication at the job level through OpenID.
Restricted Contexts: Facilitates encrypted storage and environment variables sharing across diverse projects.
Audit Logging: Utilizes audit logs to scan and detect anomalies, improve compliance, and assist in forensics.
Runtime Isolation: Runs diverse builds in isolated sandboxes and ensures that each is destroyed after use.
Console Output and Artifacts: Implements encryption over the wire using SSH and HTTPS.

Based on the above discussion, CircleCI is the winner for providing the most advanced and robust security solutions.

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GitLab vs. Jenkins vs. CircleCI: Which One to Choose?

GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI all come with their own sets of features, pros, and cons. Based on your industry, use case, or specific application area, you would need to make the right choice.Â

Hereâ€™s some help.

GitLab Top Use Cases

Version control for software development.
Project management with issue tracking and agile methodologies.
CI/CD pipelines for software delivery.
Collaboration and communication among team members with tools such as merge requests and comments.
Wikis and documentation for knowledge sharing and team onboarding.
Code review and quality assurance with automated testing.
DevOps and infrastructure automation with tools such as Terraform and Ansible.
Source code hosting and collaboration for open-source projects.
Security scanning and vulnerability management.
Kubernetes integration for container orchestration and deployment.

Jenkins Top Use Cases

CI/CD for software development.
Automation of build, test, and deployment processes for faster software delivery.
Integration with various version control systems such as Git and SVN.
Scalability and flexibility for managing large and complex software projects.
Cross-platform compatibility for building and deploying software across different operating systems and environments.
Integration with various testing frameworks for automated testing and reporting.
Pipeline as code, allowing for version-controlled and reproducible build and deployment workflows.
Integration with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure for easy deployment and management of applications.
Docker and Kubernetes integration for container-based deployment and management.
Monitoring and logging of build and deployment processes for continuous improvement and troubleshooting.

CircleCI Top Use Cases

CI/CD for software development.
Integration with popular version control systems such as GitHub and Bitbucket.
Configurable build environments with support for multiple programming languages and frameworks.
Parallelism and caching for faster builds and tests.
Automatic build and test parallelization for scaling of build and test infrastructure.
Integration with various cloud providers such as AWS, GCP, and Azure for easy deployment and management of applications.
Automatic branch and pull request builds for faster feedback loops and collaboration.
Visual pipeline editor for creating and managing complex build and deployment workflows.
On-demand and scheduled builds for automatic and timely testing and deployment.
Monitoring and logging of build and deployment processes for continuous improvement and troubleshooting.

Did this article help you understand the comparative features of GitLab, Jenkins, and CircleCI? Which CI/CD tool would you prefer to use among these? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . Weâ€™d love to hear from you!

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