GitHub Actions beats Jenkins for most CI, but Jenkins holds its ground for edge cases
A software team managing 34 repositories and around 280 daily builds hit a breaking point when 19 builds queued behind a Jenkins controller for up to 43 minutes on a Tuesday morning. After evaluating Jenkins on Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI, they concluded GitHub Actions was the best fit for standard application CI due to faster startup times of 15–60 seconds versus 2–8 minutes on their cluster. Jenkins was retained for jobs requiring custom network access, legacy scripted workflows, or connections to vendor hardware through jump hosts. GitLab CI was deemed viable only for teams already using GitLab for source control, not as a standalone Jenkins replacement alongside GitHub. Notably, their GitHub Actions bill jumped from roughly $180 to $1,460 in the first month after migration, largely because they initially replicated inefficient Jenkins pipeline behaviour rather than optimising for the new platform.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.
Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in