Jenkins vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers

	Jenkins https://jenkins.io	Github Actions https://github.com/features/actions
Unique feature	Plugins	Best GitHub integration possible
Type of product	Self-hosted / On Premise	SaaS / On Premise
Offers a free plan	Yes Free, open source software	Yes The on premise plan (not yet available) will be free, 2000 build minutes included in the free cloud plan. Completely free plan for open source projects.
Predictable pricing	Yes Jenkins is free software, the only costs are those assigned to running your infrastructure.	Yes (partial) While it's clear what the cost is (priced per build-minute), figuring out costs can be a hassle, especially as the price can vary quite a bit depending on commits to the project. One advantage for GitHub Actions is that the tiers define a maximum amount of minutes, so it's easier to predict the final cost. You can also purchase aditional runners with pricing dependent on the platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows)
Support / SLA	No (partial) No official support available, or SLAs. However, Jenkins' popularity ensures you'll find support in various places (official Jenkins forum, IRC, StackOverflow etc.)	Yes Community support available for any tier, unclear at what point and if dedicated support is available. Safe to assume that eneterprise clients can access technical support.
Paralellism Every CI servers tends to address this differently (parallel, distributed, build matrix). Some of it is just marketing, and some is just nuance. For this table, parallel means that tasks can be run concurrently on the same machine, distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro	Yes (partial) Jenkins allows builds to be run in parallel, but all builds share the same environment and there can be issues arising from shared resources such as the filesystem.	Yes Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform.
Distributed builds distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro	Yes (partial) Jenkins has a concept of master server and agents, for distributing builds, but setting that up requires quite a bit of manual work from a sysadmin, compared to other options.	N/A No specific mention, but given the fact that tasks can be run on multiple platforms, it's likely that distributed builds are also available.
Containers support / Build environment	No (partial) By default, Jenkins runs all builds in the same environment as the build server itself, which can lead to numerous issues and is generally not a good practice. Some plugins address this issue, but they need to be manually installed.	Yes Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM.
Analytics / Status overview Analytics and overview referrs to the ability to, at a glance, see what's breaking (be it a certain task, or the build for a specific project)	Yes Available via the Blue Ocean project (part of Jenkins): https://jenkins.io/doc/book/blueocean/dashboard/#dashboard	Yes Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes.
Management support How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on	No In practice, for Jenkins it usually means that there's someone solely in charge of the Jenkins instance (configuration, management). Collaboration features built into other similar products are lacking, as are governance features (no easy way to tell from Jenkins alone _who_ is responsabile for a broken build, for example), even if your Version Control Server of choice can give that information (via `git blame` for example).	N/A Unclear from the available documentation
Self-hosted option	Yes Jenkins is Open Source Software, and self-hosting is the only way to use it.	Yes Coming soon, not available yet.
Hosted plans / SaaS	No Only available for self-hosting.	Yes
Build pipelines A continuous delivery pipeline is a description of the process that the software goes through from a new code commit, through testing and other statical analysis steps all the way to the end-users of the product.	Yes Offers extensive support for custom pipelines, either through the Jenkins Pipeline DSL, written in a Jenkinsfile, either through the Web UI. Also, their Blue Ocean project is a great tool for building pipelines: https://jenkins.io/projects/blueocean/	Yes Called GitHub Action Workflows, they are defined in separate Docker containers, using the YAML syntax (they used to support HCL, but they're migrating away from that)
Reports Reports are about the abilty to see specific reports (like code coverage or custom ones), but not necesarily tied in into a larger dashboard.	Yes Has ready-made integrations for standard reports such as JUnit test results.	N/A Unclear from the available documentation
Ecosystem Besides the official documentation and software, is there a large community using this product? Are there any community-driven tools / plugins that you can use?	> 1000 community plugins Thanks to it's popularity, there's a large selection of available plugins for Jenkins. They can all be easily browsed over at https://plugins.jenkins.io/. The downside is that almost anything you want to do in Jenkins requires installing a plugin, even core functionality such as parsing output or checking out source code.	Yes Thanks to the large following, GitHub Actions already enjoys a wide varierty of available pre-made workflows, which you can browse right on the homepage: https://github.com/features/actions
Specific language support: Ruby Some CI servers have built-in support for parsing RSpec or Istanbul output for example and we mention those. Some others make it even easier by detecting Gemfiles or package.json and automate parts of the process for the developer.	Yes (Partial) RSpec and Cucumber test suites can be integrated into Jenkins thanks to the large pool of available plugins and Ruby gems. Jenkins only understands the JUnit format natively.	Yes Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage
Specific language support: JavaScript	Yes (Partial) Jest, AVA and other test suites can be integrated into Jenkins thanks to the large pool of available plugins and NPM packages. Jenkins only understands the JUnit format natively.	Yes Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage
Integrations 1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc)	Yes Allows integrations with other tools (ie: Slack, GitHub) or communication protocols (ie: email) via it's rich plugin suite	Yes Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more)
API Custom integreation is available, via an API or otherwise, it's mentioned separately as it allows further customization than any of the Ecosystem/Integration options	Yes For use-cases that the +1k plugins don't cover, the Jenkins Remote API is yet another way to integrate Jenkins into your favorite tools or internal products.	N/A Unclear at the moment, but assume GitHub Actions will be integrated with the GitHub GraphQL API (one of the more mature GraphQL API implementations available)
Auditing	No Jenkins instances are really managed by a sole user with administrative privileges. This can lead to various issues when it comes to audit trails / accountability.	N/A
Additional notes

Programming Language	Supported test runners	Installation guide	Knapsack Pro Library README / Source
Ruby	RSpec, Cucumber, Minitest, test-unit, Spinach, Turnip	Install	knapsack_pro gem
JavaScript	Cypress.io	Install	@knapsack-pro/cypress
JavaScript	Jest	Install	@knapsack-pro/jest
JavaScript / TypeScript	Any test runner in JavaScript	How to build native integration with Knapsack Pro API to run tests in parallel for any test runner	@knapsack-pro/core
Any programming language	Any test runner	How to build a custom Knapsack Pro API client from scratch in any programming language	-

Jenkins vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers What are the differences between Jenkins and Github Actions?

Jenkins

Github Actions

Plugins

Best GitHub integration possible

Self-hosted / On Premise

SaaS / On Premise

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes (partial)

No (partial)

Yes

Yes (partial)

Yes

Yes (partial)

N/A

No (partial)

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

N/A

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

> 1000 community plugins

Yes

Yes (Partial)

Yes

Yes (Partial)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

N/A

No

N/A

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Jenkins vs Github Actions comparison of Continuous Integration servers
What are the differences between Jenkins and Github Actions?

How to run parallel tests on Jenkins and Github Actions
to execute 1-hour test suite in 2 minutes?

How much can you save with faster tests
on Jenkins and Github Actions?