Contrast Security Assess vs GitLab comparison

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Contrast Security Assess

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Contrast Security Assess and GitLab compete in the software security and productivity market. Contrast Security Assess excels in application security testing, while GitLab stands out for its comprehensive DevOps and automation capabilities.

Features: Contrast Security Assess offers real-time security verification, easy integration into existing workflows, and a feature allowing control over identified vulnerabilities. GitLab provides excellent CI/CD pipelines, robust code versioning, and strong collaboration tools, catering to development and operations from end to end.

Room for Improvement: Contrast Security Assess could enhance its user interface for better usability and offer more integration options with third-party tools. Additionally, improving documentation clarity would benefit users. GitLab could reduce complexity in its extensive features, streamline its interface for new users, and enhance its code analysis capabilities to better compete with dedicated security tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab facilitates seamless deployment with comprehensive guides and strong community support. Contrast Security Assess offers personalized customer service, providing direct solutions to security-specific issues, making it favorable for organizations seeking attentive support.

Pricing and ROI: Contrast Security Assess presents attractive setup costs focusing on security, offering good ROI for security-prioritized companies. GitLab, despite its higher cost, offers a broader feature set promising higher long-term ROI by increasing productivity through integrated functionalities.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab Report (Updated: January 2025).

Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab

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Helped 831,265 peers since 2012

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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

28th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

24th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Application Security Tools

10th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), 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 January 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.

Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."

"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

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

"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."

"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."

"It is very flexible and easy because you can store data on cloud."

"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."

"The best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish."

"The stability is good."

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."

"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."

"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."

"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."

"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."

"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."

"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."

"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."

"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."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"The solution is expensive."

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

"We are using the free version of GitLab."

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

"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's pricing is good compared to others on the market."

"This is an open-source solution."

"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."

"Regarding pricing, I would rate GitLab as moderately priced, maybe around a seven or eight out of ten. It could be more flexible for clients but generally offers good value."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.

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831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Educational Organization

29%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?

When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?

The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten.

What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?

Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...

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?

There are missing search features, particularly when searching repositories or applying filters. Additionally, I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing w...

Seeker vs Contrast Security Assess

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Compared 8% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 8% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Contrast Security Assess

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Download GitLab product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Fuzzit

Overview

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

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

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

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

Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab