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Black Duck vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (8th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 20.0%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 4.5%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the vulnerability scanning, and that it's easy to use."
"The automated code scanning feature and Black Duck's integration with our development tools have enhanced our software compliance process and overall audit readiness."
"Policy management is a valuable feature."
"We didn't have a central inventory to quickly identify issues or determine how many products were affected. Now under Black Duck, it's all consolidated. You search for a component and immediately see which products use it."
"Black Duck is pretty extensive in terms of the scan reserves and the vulnerability exposures. From that perspective, I'm happy with it."
"The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the seamless integration to scan our Docker binary files, it provides us all open vulnerabilities, and it ensures a reference point from where it finds the vulnerability is up to date. For example, if there is any new vulnerability found, they are immediately available in the Black Duck. There is no delay in finding the vulnerabilities, they are called out in our code immediately."
"The stability is okay."
"The most valuable feature for me in Black Duck is its ability to scan binary files effectively."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"It scales well."
"GitLab's source control is excellent."
"If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines."
"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."
"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
 

Cons

"The product's pricing is higher compared to other competitor products."
"We have been having some issues with the latest releases where we are not able to scan our applications with the help of Black Duck."
"There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers."
"It can be cumbersome to use or invalidate open source software because there is a hold time to check requirements or common regulations to ensure compliance."
"There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers."
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions, such as IntelliJ IDEA."
"I would like to see improvements in Black Duck's reporting capabilities."
"The tool needs to improve its pricing. Its configuration is complex and can be improved."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."
"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."
"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."
"The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required."
"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
"It is expensive."
"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"The pricing is a little high."
"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."
"We are using the open-source version."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
4%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
What do you like most about GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLa...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.