IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Developer platform › CI/CD › Enterprise › September 2026 Edition

CI/CD platforms for enterprise buyers

Asked as “CI/CD platform”, and as “continuous integration and delivery tool”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 50 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
GitLab CI/CD
Clear leader
44% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessGitHub Actions93%Clear leaderStanding →Mid-marketGitHub Actions65%Clear leaderStanding →EnterpriseGitLab CI/CD44%Clear leaderThis page

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01GitLab CI/CD44%9%65endorsed leader
02GitHub Actions16%24%46accepted challenger
03GitHub12%0%15accepted challenger
04Azure DevOps8%9%35accepted challenger
05Jenkins8%51%53criticized challenger
06Buildkite6%17%18accepted challenger
07CloudBees CI2%0%11accepted challenger
08CircleCI2%32%44criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
10JetBrains TeamCity0%21%24accepted challenger
09Harness0%0%26accepted challenger
11Octopus Deploy0%0%11accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
GitHub Actions vs GitLab CI/CDGitHub Actions vs CircleCIGitLab CI/CD vs CircleCI

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01GitLab CI/CD44%
02GitHub Actions16%
03GitHub12%
04Azure DevOps8%
05Jenkins8%
06Buildkite6%
07CloudBees CI2%
08CircleCI2%
09Harness0%
10JetBrains TeamCity0%
11Octopus Deploy0%

02What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Jenkins
51%
27 of 53 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 8 hard negative
“If you are still on Jenkins, make a migration plan to GitHub, GitLab, or Harness your priority.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, direct prompt
CircleCI
32%
14 of 44 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“GitHub Actions (hosted) and CircleCI (cloud) — per-minute/credit billing that scales linearly and sometimes super-linearly” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
GitHub Actions
24%
11 of 46 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“What to avoid for this requirement - **GitHub Actions (hosted) and CircleCI (cloud)** — per-minute/credit billing that scales linearly” DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt
Atlassian Bamboo
67%
6 of 9 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“**Why to Avoid:** Atlassian announced a firm timeline to phase out its Data Center product line.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

62 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 4 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 879 links across 256 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

octopus.com
36 answers · 40 citations · 10 models
blog.jetbrains.com
29 answers · 35 citations · 10 models
toolradar.com
26 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
checkthat.ai
17 answers · 20 citations · 7 models
deployhq.com
vendor site · DeployHQ17 answers · 17 citations · 8 models
em360tech.com
17 answers · 17 citations · 10 models
augmentcode.com
vendor site · Augment Code15 answers · 18 citations · 8 models
circleci.com
vendor site · CircleCI14 answers · 24 citations · 7 models
devopsplatforms.com
14 answers · 19 citations · 6 models
semaphore.io
vendor site · Semaphore13 answers · 16 citations · 9 models
vendorbenchmark.com
12 answers · 19 citations · 10 models
cicdcost.com
12 answers · 17 citations · 9 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

octopus.com/devops/ci-cd/ci-cd-tools-for-enterprise
35 answers · 10 models
blog.jetbrains.com/teamcity/2026/03/best-ci-tools
27 answers · 10 models
toolradar.com/blog/best-ci-cd-tools
25 answers · 9 models
em360tech.com/top-10/top-enterprise-ci-cd-tools
17 answers · 10 models
checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-ci-cd-tools
14 answers · 6 models
deployhq.com/blog/best-ci-cd-software-top-10-tools-to-know-in-2025
14 answers · 8 models
augmentcode.com/tools/continuous-integration-tools
13 answers · 8 models
devopsness.com/blog/best-cicd-platforms
10 answers · 7 models
in-com.com/blog/top-ci-cd-tools-comparison-for-enterprises-architectures-pi…
10 answers · 9 models
vendorbenchmark.com/blog/ci-cd-platform-pricing-benchmark-comparison
10 answers · 9 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best CI/CD platform for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which continuous integration and delivery tool would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade CI/CD platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best CI/CD platform for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a CI/CD platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which CI/CD platforms should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
no first choiceChangedno first choiceagainst: JenkinsCircleCI, GitHub Actions
One alternativeGitLab CI/CD
against: Buildkiteno first choiceagainst: Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
GPT-5.4 miniGitHub Actions
Three alternativesAWS CodePipeline, Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD
against: JenkinsGitLab CI/CDChanged
Two alternativesCircleCI, GitHub Actions
against: Jenkinsno first choiceagainst: Atlassian BambooGitLab CI/CDagainst: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Jenkinsno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashGitHub, GitLab CI/CD
Four alternativesArgo CD, Azure DevOps, Buildkite, Harness
against: JenkinsGitHubChanged
Three alternativesArgo CD, GitLab CI/CD, Harness
against: JenkinsGitHub, GitLab CI/CD
Three alternativesArgo CD, Azure DevOps, Harness
against: Jenkins / CloudBees EnterpriseBuildkite
Five alternativesArgo CD, GitHub, GitLab CI/CD, JetBrains TeamCity, Tekton
against: Atlassian Bamboo, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCityGitHub
Two alternativesGitLab CI/CD, Harness
against: AWS CodePipeline, Atlassian Bamboo, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Bitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, GCP Cloud Build, Jenkins, Travis CI
Perplexity SonarGitLab CI/CD
Four alternativesAzure Pipelines, CircleCI, Harness, Jenkins
GitLab CI/CDHeld
Four alternativesHarness, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, Spinnaker
GitLab CI/CD
Eight alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Harness, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity, Octopus Deploy
GitLab CI/CD, Jenkinsagainst: GitHub Actionsno first choiceagainst: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
Grok 4.1 FastGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
Five alternativesAtlassian, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, CloudBees CI, Jenkins
JenkinsChanged
Three alternativesAzure Pipelines, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCIno first choiceGitHub Enterprise Server
Three alternativesArgo CD, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
against: Azure Pipelines, CircleCI, GitHub ActionsGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
Four alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, Harness, Semaphore
against: Jenkinsagainst: Atlassian Bamboo, CircleCI, Drone CI, Jenkins, Travis CI
Mistral SmallGitLab CI/CD
Three alternativesBuildkite, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CDChanged
Three alternativesCircleCI, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
no first choiceGitHub Actions
Two alternativesCloudBees CI, GitLab CI/CD
no first choiceagainst: CircleCI, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
DeepSeek V4 FlashGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, Jenkins
GitLab CI/CDChanged
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, Harness, Octopus Deploy
against: GitHub Actions, Jenkinsno first choiceBuildkite
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, CloudBees CI, GitLab CI/CD
against: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CDGitLab CI/CD
One alternativeGitHub
against: Jenkinsagainst: Argo Workflows, Buildbot, Buildkite, CircleCI, Concourse CI, Drone, GitLab CI/CD, GoCD, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
Llama 4 Maverickno first choice
Three alternativesBuildkite, CircleCI, Octopus Deploy
GitLab CI/CDChangedno first choiceno first choiceno first choiceagainst: CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
Qwen 3.7 FlashGitLab CI/CD
Three alternativesCircleCI, CloudBees CI, GitHub Actions
against: JenkinsGitHubChanged
Two alternativesAzure DevOps, Harness
against: Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCityGitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD
Four alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
against: Atlassian BambooGitLab CI/CD
One alternativeBuildkite
against: GitHub Actionsno first choiceagainst: Azure Pipelines, Buildbot, GitHub Actions, HP ALM, IBM UrbanCode, Jenkins, Travis CI
Kimi K2GitLab CI/CD
Four alternativesAzure DevOps, Buildkite, GitHub Actions, Harness
against: JenkinsGitLab CI/CDHeld
One alternativeGitHub
GitHub Actions
Five alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Harness, Jenkins
CloudBees CI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, GitHub Enterprise Server, Semaphore
against: Buildkite, CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CDGitHub, GitLab CI/CD
One alternativeAzure DevOps
against: Atlassian Bamboo, Jenkins, Travis CI
GLM 4.7 FlashXGitHub Actions
Four alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, JetBrains TeamCity
against: JenkinsAzure DevOpsChanged
Two alternativesGitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
no first choiceJenkins
One alternativeGitHub Enterprise Server
against: Azure DevOps, CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CDno first choiceagainst: AWS CodeBuild, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins
MiniMax M2.5Azure DevOps, GitLab CI/CDagainst: Jenkinsno first choiceChanged
Four alternativesAzure DevOps, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, JetBrains TeamCity
no first choiceBuildkite, GitHub
One alternativeAzure DevOps
against: CircleCIGitLab CI/CD
Three alternativesAzure DevOps, CircleCI, GitHub
against: Jenkinsagainst: Jenkins
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:24no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:46yes36 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:22yes1026 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:23yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:22yes3321 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:25yes1010 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:45yes1515 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:21yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:31no036 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:32yes1550 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:24yes1990 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:46yes531 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:44no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:30yes56 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:37no016 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:32yes204 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:24yes2916 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:24no06 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:38yes1014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:27yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:37yes2049 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:35yes1538 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:46yes1026 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:35yes516 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:35yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:22yes510 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:35yes2229 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:27yes2013 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:29yes2215 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:33yes1312 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:26yes1418 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:33yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:30no036 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:31yes1550 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:35yes2566 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:31yes523 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:34yes1810 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:41yes47 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:39yes1733 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:45yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:27yes3119 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:36yes56 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:28yes2223 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:22yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:24yes1059 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:25yes1795 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:41yes2855 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:25yes1658 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:23yes189 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:31no07 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:23no017 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:46yes2012 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:21yes1715 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:42no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:29yes1521 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:43yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:45yes542 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:48yes2989 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:34yes1539 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:27no015 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 07:31yes189 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 07:43yes59 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 07:25yes924 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 07:30yes187 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 07:31yes4217 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 07:40yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 07:22yes3033 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 07:38yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 07:30yes1236 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 07:26yes2448 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 07:24yes2440 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 07:47yes1961 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
CloudBees read as CloudBees CI
GitLab read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab (CE & EE) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab (Self-Managed / Ultimate) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab CI (cloud) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab SaaS (Premium/Ultimate) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Self-Managed read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Self-Managed (Ultimate tier) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Ultimate read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Ultimate (GitLab CI/CD) read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab Ultimate / Premium read as GitLab CI/CD
GitLab self-managed read as GitLab CI/CD
Self-Hosted GitLab (CE or Ultimate Self-Managed) read as GitLab CI/CD
Unresolved, counted raw
Concourse CI
GCP Cloud Build
GitLab Roles
HP ALM
Octopus
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in developer platform

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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