Azure Pipelines is the CI/CD service in Microsoft's Azure DevOps, billed by parallel jobs and also shipped in on-premises Azure DevOps Server; these pages cover replacing it with self-hosted Jenkins, Woodpecker CI or GitLab CI/CD.
Comparing Azure Pipelines with self-hosted Jenkins: YAML pipelines against Jenkinsfiles, parallel-job billing against agents you run, classic release pipelines against Jenkins deployment stages, Windows and .NET build support, and the work of operating Jenkins plugins.
Comparing Azure Pipelines with Woodpecker CI, a lightweight container-first engine: where Woodpecker fits (Linux container builds on GitHub, Gitea, Forgejo, GitLab or Bitbucket) and where it does not (Azure Repos, TFVC, Windows-heavy builds).
Comparing Azure Pipelines with GitLab CI/CD on self-managed GitLab: YAML syntax and templates, agents against GitLab Runner executors, environments and approvals, and when moving CI means moving repositories and boards to GitLab too.
Moving Azure Pipelines to Jenkins: YAML stages, jobs and templates to Jenkinsfiles and shared libraries, classic release pipelines to deployment stages, service connections and variable groups to Jenkins credentials, and agent pools to Kubernetes pod agents.
Cost of ownership by component: Microsoft-hosted and self-hosted parallel jobs, Managed DevOps Pools and agent VMs, against Jenkins or Woodpecker CI servers, build agents, storage, migration and the people who operate them.
Classic release pipelines, task groups and deployment groups can no longer be created by default in new organizations. This page maps their stages, approvals and deployment groups to Jenkins deployment stages or, for Kubernetes targets, Argo CD.
What you can take out of Azure Pipelines: YAML definitions already in the repository, classic pipeline definitions through the REST API, run history and logs, artifacts, and secret variables and service connections that must be re-created because their values cannot be read back.
Tell us what you're working on, whether it's a deployment, an audit, a security test or a cyber range. You'll speak with an engineer who can help you scope it.