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CircleCI vs GitLab vs TeamCity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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. The mindshare of TeamCity is 7.7%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Omakoji Idakwoji - PeerSpot reviewer
Build management system used to successfully create full request tests and run security scans
I find the TeamCity backend easily accessible. Users can login to the Linux servers that TeamCity is installed on and perform operations. Also I find the ability to template solutions using the meta runner a good feature as well as the user management feature. There is a display that shows which user made recent changes to a branch on GitHub, including the time the changes were made and the particular agent that ran the job. This is also a very useful feature. The metrics and audit available for projects, pipelines and jobs come in handy when debugging.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"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."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"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 initial setup of GitLab is pretty simple, with no complications."
"GitLab's best feature is Actions."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the review, patch repo, and plans are in YAML."
"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."
"GitLab's source control is excellent."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"GitLab's best features are continuous integration and fast deployment."
"The scalability is good."
"Good integration with IDE and JetBrains products."
"TeamCity is more structured and user-friendly than other vendors."
"TeamCity is very useful due to the fact that it has a strong plug-in system."
"VCS Trigger: Provides excellent source control support."
"I have not yet implemented the remote build feature, but this will be a big plus. We want to be able to build legacy products on a build agent without developers needing to have obsolete tool sets installed on their local PC."
"Time to deployment has been reduced in situations where we want to deploy to production or deploy breaking changes."
"TeamCity is a very user-friendly tool."
"One of the most beneficial features for us is the flexibility it offers in creating deployment steps tailored to different technologies."
 

Cons

"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."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"Billing is a mess."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"Based on what I know so far, its integration with Kubernetes is not so good. We have to develop many things to make it work. We have to acquire third-party components to work with Kubernetes."
"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."
"The solution could be faster."
"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"GitLab could improve the patch repository. It does not have support for Conan patch version regions. Additionally, better support for Kubernetes deployment is needed as part of the package."
"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."
"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."
"If there was more documentation that was easier to locate, it would be helpful for users."
"Integrating with certain technologies posed challenges related to time and required support from the respective technology teams to ensure smooth integration with TeamCity."
"I would suggest creating simple and advanced configurations. Advanced configurations will give more customizations like Jenkins does."
"I need some more graphical design."
"We've called TeamCity tech support. Unfortunately, all their tech support is based in Europe, so we end up with such a big time crunch that I now need to have one person in the US."
"The UI for this solution could be improved. New users don't find it easy to navigate. The need some level of training to understand the ins and the outs."
"It will benefit this solution if they keep up to date with other CI/CD systems out there."
"Last time I used it, dotnet compilation had to be done via PowerShell scripts. There was actually a lot that had to be scripted."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"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."
"GitLab is cheap."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"The licensing is on an annual basis."
"Start with the free tier for a few build configs and see how it works for you, then according to your scale find the enterprise license which fits you the most."
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Comparison Review

it_user184734 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 22, 2015
I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.
Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
24%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 bi...
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup ...
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 provi...
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 ...
What do you like most about TeamCity?
One of the most beneficial features for us is the flexibility it offers in creating deployment steps tailored to diff...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TeamCity?
Compared to new technologies, TeamCity is more expensive and is an older tool compared to tools like GitLab.
What needs improvement with TeamCity?
TeamCity's user interface could be improved; specifically, the tree structure on the homepage is not clear, making it...
 

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
Toyota, Xerox, Apple, MIT, Volkswagen, HP, Twitter, Expedia
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, Jenkins and others in Build Automation. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.