Abstract
An automated test suite is only as good as the system that runs it: if tests execute only when a developer remembers to run them, the contract they protect is enforced only sometimes. This article compares three of the most widely used CI/CD testing management tools — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD and Jenkins — by giving them identical work: executing the same real API test suite (Jest + Supertest, 8 integration tests, 100% coverage, from my previous article) on every push. Instead of comparing marketing pages, we compare the three real pipeline files, side by side, in one public repository. The comparison covers configuration style, hosting model, dependency caching, artifacts and ecosystem, and closes with a practical decision guide. Full demo repo with all three pipelines: https://github.com/GianfrancoArocutipa/ci-testing-comparative.
The experiment: one suite, three pipelines
Comparing CI tools is usually apples to oranges — different projects, different jobs. To make it fair, this repository gives all three tools the exact same job:
Check out the code.
