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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. Continuous Integration
  5. CircleCI vs Jenkins

CircleCI vs Jenkins

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

CircleCI
CircleCI
Stacks14.5K
Followers7.1K
Votes974
Jenkins
Jenkins
Stacks59.2K
Followers50.4K
Votes2.2K
GitHub Stars24.6K
Forks9.2K

CircleCI vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

  1. Key difference 1: Deployment options: One of the main differences between CircleCI and Jenkins is the deployment options they offer. CircleCI provides a cloud-based platform where you can easily deploy your applications and workflows without having to set up and maintain your own infrastructure. On the other hand, Jenkins is a self-hosted solution that requires you to set up, configure, and maintain your own servers to deploy your applications.

  2. Key difference 2: Ease of use: CircleCI is known for its simple and user-friendly interface, making it easy for developers to set up and configure their continuous integration and deployment pipelines. Jenkins, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve and requires more technical knowledge to effectively use and configure it.

  3. Key difference 3: Extensibility: Jenkins is highly extensible and offers a vast number of plugins that allow you to customize and extend its functionality. You can find plugins for various tasks, such as code analysis, testing frameworks, and integration with other tools. CircleCI, on the other hand, has a more limited plugin ecosystem and may require more manual configuration to achieve the same level of extensibility.

  4. Key difference 4: Scalability: CircleCI is designed to handle large workloads and can scale horizontally by spinning up additional build containers as needed. This makes it suitable for teams or organizations with high build volumes and varying workloads. Jenkins, on the other hand, requires dedicated hardware resources and may face scalability challenges when dealing with large build volumes.

  5. Key difference 5: Maintenance: CircleCI handles most of the underlying infrastructure maintenance, ensuring that the platform is up to date and running smoothly. This saves time and effort for developers who can focus on their code rather than managing servers. In contrast, Jenkins requires regular maintenance and updates to ensure its stability and security, which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive.

  6. Key difference 6: Pricing model: CircleCI offers a pricing model based on usage, where you pay for the resources and features you use. This can be cost-effective for smaller teams or projects with varying build volumes. Jenkins, on the other hand, is an open-source tool that is free to use, but it requires investment in hardware resources and ongoing maintenance, which may involve higher upfront costs.

In Summary, CircleCI offers a cloud-based, user-friendly, and scalable solution with easier maintenance and a flexible pricing model, while Jenkins provides extensibility, requires self-hosting and maintenance, and is more suitable for teams with specific needs and resources.

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Advice on CircleCI, Jenkins

Somnath
Somnath

Engineering Leader at Altimetrik Corp.

Jun 25, 2020

Needs adviceonCircleCICircleCIDrone.ioDrone.ioGitHub ActionsGitHub Actions

I am in the process of evaluating CircleCI, Drone.io, and GitHub Actions to cover my #CI/ #CD needs. I would appreciate your advice on comparative study w.r.t. attributes like language-Inclusive support, code-base integration, performance, cost, maintenance, support, ease of use, ability to deal with big projects, etc. based on actual industry experience.

Thanks in advance!

1.82M views1.82M
Comments
Balaramesh
Balaramesh

Apr 20, 2020

Needs adviceonAzure PipelinesAzure Pipelines.NET.NETJenkinsJenkins

We are currently using Azure Pipelines for continous integration. Our applications are developed witn .NET framework. But when we look at the online Jenkins is the most widely used tool for continous integration. Can you please give me the advice which one is best to use for my case Azure pipeline or jenkins.

663k views663k
Comments
Felipe
Felipe

May 24, 2020

Needs advice

My website is brand new and one of the few requirements of testings I had to implement was code coverage. Never though it was so hard to implement using a #docker container.
Given my lack of experience, every attempt I tried on making a simple code coverage test using the 4 combinations of #TravisCI, #CircleCi with #Coveralls, #Codecov I failed. The main problem was I was generating the .coverage file within the docker container and couldn't access it with #TravisCi or #CircleCi, every attempt to solve this problem seems to be very hacky and this was not the kind of complexity I want to introduce to my newborn website.
This problem was solved using a specific action for #GitHubActions, it was a 3 line solution I had to put in my github workflow file and I was able to access the .coverage file from my docker container and get the coverage report with #Codecov.

198k views198k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

CircleCI
CircleCI
Jenkins
Jenkins

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.

Language-Inclusive Support;Custom Environments;Flexible Resource Allocation;SSH Or Local Builds For Easy Debugging;Improved Caching;Unmatched Security;Parallelism;Insights
Easy installation;Easy configuration;Change set support;Permanent links;RSS/E-mail/IM Integration;After-the-fact tagging;JUnit/TestNG test reporting;Distributed builds;File fingerprinting;Plugin Support
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
24.6K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
9.2K
Stacks
14.5K
Stacks
59.2K
Followers
7.1K
Followers
50.4K
Votes
974
Votes
2.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 226
    Github integration
  • 177
    Easy setup
  • 153
    Fast builds
  • 94
    Competitively priced
  • 74
    Slack integration
Cons
  • 12
    Unstable
  • 6
    Scammy pricing structure
  • 0
    Aggressive Github permissions
Pros
  • 523
    Hosted internally
  • 469
    Free open source
  • 318
    Great to build, deploy or launch anything async
  • 243
    Tons of integrations
  • 211
    Rich set of plugins with good documentation
Cons
  • 13
    Workarounds needed for basic requirements
  • 10
    Groovy with cumbersome syntax
  • 8
    Plugins compatibility issues
  • 7
    Lack of support
  • 7
    Limited abilities with declarative pipelines
Integrations
dotCloud
dotCloud
GitHub
GitHub
Xcode
Xcode
Azure Container Service
Azure Container Service
Slack
Slack
Heroku
Heroku
JavaScript
JavaScript
Node.js
Node.js
Python
Python
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to CircleCI, Jenkins?

Travis CI

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

TeamCity

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

Drone.io

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

GoCD

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Shippable

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Buildkite

Buildkite

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.

Snap CI

Snap CI

Snap CI is a cloud-based continuous integration & continuous deployment tool with powerful deployment pipelines. Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and provides fast feedback so you can deploy with ease.

Appveyor

Appveyor

AppVeyor aims to give powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment tools to every .NET developer without the hassle of setting up and maintaining their own build server.

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