Head to head
CircleCI vs Jenkins
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
58/100Higher score | 50/100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #3 | #4 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 79 | 83 |
| AI Authority | 64 | 29 |
| Web Authority | 18 | 21 |
| Expert Assessment | 57 | 60 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | From $15/month (Performance) · free tier: $0/month, no credit card: 30,000 credits/month (page also claims up to 6,000 build minutes), up to 5 active users, 1 GB network, 2 GB storage, 30x concurrency (macOS concurrency 1), Docker layer caching, private orbs, 5 self-hosted runner tasks; credits expire monthly with no rollover | Not published (no paid plans sold by the Jenkins project) · free tier: Entire product is free — Jenkins core is MIT-licensed and downloadable from jenkins.io/download with no seat or build-minute limits |
| Pricing model | Credit-based (usage-based, prepaid credits) | Open source, self-hosted (no licence fee); no vendor-sold hosted plans |
| Best for | Teams needing heterogeneous compute (Linux + Arm + Windows + macOS or GPU jobs) in one pipeline, with bursty build volume they can absorb via high concurrency, plus open-source projects and qualifying startups exploiting the large free credit allowances. | Platform or DevOps teams that need on-premise or air-gapped builds, heterogeneous toolchains and unusual pipeline shapes SaaS CI cannot express, and can absorb ongoing plugin and controller maintenance in exchange for zero licence cost — Capterra's reviewer base skews enterprise at 45%. |
| Avoid if | You need SSO or policy-as-code without an annual sales contract, require a predictable flat monthly bill and cannot accept auto-refill plus forfeiture-on-cancellation, are already deep in a GitHub-native workflow, or want minimal YAML authoring. | You have no platform engineer, your code already lives entirely in GitHub or GitLab where integrated CI is near-zero-ops, you need a vendor with a support SLA and a phone number, or your team is standardised on YAML pipelines with no appetite for Groovy. |
| Markets | Startup, SMB, Enterprise, Open source projects | SMB, Midmarket, Enterprise |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.