Question 1

What’s the difference between Jenkins and GitHub Actions?

Accepted Answer

Jenkins is a self-managed automation server you install and operate (you maintain plugins, upgrades, agents, and scaling). GitHub Actions is a managed CI/CD service built into GitHub, where workflows run on GitHub-hosted runners or your own runners. Jenkins offers deep customization and a huge plugin ecosystem, while GitHub Actions is simpler to start with if your code is already in GitHub and you prefer a managed experience.

Question 2

When should I use Jenkins?

Accepted Answer

Use Jenkins when you need highly customizable pipelines, want to run CI/CD in your own environment (for compliance, network isolation, or special build requirements), or rely on specific integrations available through Jenkins plugins. It’s also a good fit when you want one automation tool that can orchestrate many systems (multiple repos, build tools, test frameworks, and deployment targets) across different clouds or on-prem.

Question 3

How much does Jenkins cost?

Accepted Answer

Jenkins is free and open source, but you pay for the infrastructure and operations: compute for the controller and build agents (VMs/containers), storage for artifacts and logs, networking, backups, monitoring, and the engineering time to maintain it (upgrades, plugin management, security patches, scaling). Costs vary mainly with build frequency, build duration, concurrency, and whether you use autoscaling agents (for example, ephemeral Kubernetes pods) to reduce idle capacity.

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