CircleCI vs GitLab comparison

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CircleCI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

CircleCI and GitLab compete in the CI/CD space, with GitLab holding a leading edge due to its comprehensive feature set, while CircleCI is attractive for its pricing and support.

Features: CircleCI offers robust container-based builds, integration with Bitbucket, and artifact storage. It supports SSH into the build environment, encryption of environment variables, and flexible workflow automation. GitLab provides powerful DevOps capabilities, containerized job management, and an integrated CI/CD and SCM solution. Its interface supports efficient peer code reviews and merges.

Room for Improvement: CircleCI could enhance its integration capabilities and scalability for larger enterprises. Simplifying the initial setup process would improve user onboarding. Enhancing documentation for less technical users could broaden its appeal. GitLab has a steep learning curve and can overwhelm new users. Its deployment complexity in self-hosted scenarios can be demanding, and improving customer support response times would enhance user satisfaction.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CircleCI's cloud-based deployment minimizes infrastructure hurdles, and its customer service is known for quick response times and effective support. GitLab offers both cloud and self-hosted options, making it versatile but potentially complex in non-cloud deployments. Its customer service is robust, supported by extensive documentation, though response times can vary.

Pricing and ROI: CircleCI has a competitive pricing structure conducive for smaller teams, ensuring fast ROI through effective CI/CD processes. GitLab, while generally more costly, offers substantial long-term value through its tool suite. Its initial investment is higher, but ROI is favorable with effective use of its comprehensive capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed CircleCI vs. GitLab Report (Updated: April 2025).

CircleCI vs. GitLab

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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

CircleCI

Ranking in Build Automation

14th

Average Rating

6.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), 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 April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.2%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 16.6%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521

Chief Technology Officer at Kyberlife

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.

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Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."

"It's a stable product."

"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."

"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."

"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 solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."

"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."

"I like that you can use GitLab as a double-sided solution for both DevOps and version management. It's a good product for working in these two areas, and the user interface makes it easy to understand."

"Everything is easy to configure and easy to work with."

"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."

"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."

"Git hosting has an integration with ACD which is why we liked this solution in the first place."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."

"Billing is a mess."

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

"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 licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"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."

"I don't really like the new Kubernetes integration because it is pretty focused on the on-premise environment, but we're in a hybrid environment."

"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."

"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."

"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."

"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."

"The documentation is confusing."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

"GitLab is cheap."

"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."

"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

"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."

"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."

"This is an open-source solution."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

24%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

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?

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...

GitHub Actions vs CircleCI

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Product Reports

Build Automation

Download CircleCI product report

Download GitLab product report

Also Known As

No data available

Fuzzit

Overview

CircleCI is a leading platform for automating continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), valued for its capability to manage software updates efficiently. With an easy-to-configure system using YAML files and robust Docker support, CircleCI streamlines backend updates, frontend developments, and mobile app testing across devices. Its parallelism feature and insightful dashboard reduce processing times and improve workflow visibility, respectively, enhancing team collaboration and productivity while maintaining high-quality outputs across development stages.

CircleCI

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

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

CircleCI vs. GitLab