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CircleCI vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

CircleCI
Ranking in Build Automation
13th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (10th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.6%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 17.3%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 26, 2023
Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read and understand issues when emailing them. They reply to me with a totally different context about the problem. Just yesterday, my web applications failed to 'yarn build' after I downgraded the resource class from extr-large to large. I contacted support and got no reply. Billing is a mess. There is duplicate information in the bill downloaded from their website and when I asked for a consolidated bill, they just answered that they didn't have it. There is no transparency on how many billed minutes and credits I spent each day both on their website and the monthly bill which makes it difficult to understand when the monthly bill contains many refill item charges. It is difficult or impossible to track usage and burndown of my subscription and to gain total outstanding refill amounts on a daily basis. Their website doesn't provide sufficient information on credits allocated/calculated for my extra-large resource class.
Corné den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 15, 2022
Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage
It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful. In terms of additional features, nothing comes to mind. One of the potential pitfalls is to keep adding new features and functionalities. They can just improve some of the existing features to make it high-end, top-quality. I don't have any substantial experience with agile planning. I don't know the industries GitLab is in, and I don't know why they make decisions like this, but as a customer, I would rather see them invest in improving the basic agile planning functionalities rather than adding, for example, portfolio planning features. That's because if I'm going to do portfolio planning, I probably will also need a lot of business users. I'm not sure if I want them in GitLab, I'd rather have them in Jira collaborating with me on portfolio planning. That's way better fitted for that type of work.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"It's a stable product."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."
"They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features."
"A user friendly solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is compatible with GitHub. The product's integration capabilities are sufficient for our small company of 35 people."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"Billing is a mess."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"We would like to have easier tutorials. Their tutorials are too technical for a user to understand. They should be more detailed but less technical."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."
"In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD automation features specifically tailored for DigitalOcean would be beneficial."
"Atlassian offers more products than GitLab. GitLab offers source control management, version control and collaboration between developers. Atlassian offers features on top of this as well as more integration points for developers."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."
"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CircleCI?
The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
Beware of skyrocketing bills as CircleCI does not provide transparency into how they charge refills. Their monthly billing statement is almost unreadable and their online dashboard doesn't provide ...
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read...
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 needs improvement with GitLab?
In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD aut...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
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 CircleCI vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.