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: March 2025).

Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab

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Helped 842,466 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

26th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

23rd

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

8th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

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 March 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, up from 0.4% 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

"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 solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."

"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."

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

"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."

"GitLab's best feature is Actions."

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

"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."

"For us, Gitlab's most valuable feature is the integration with Cypress. We're using Cypress as an automation tool, so we're using GitLab as a tool for running in parallel."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

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

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

"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"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."

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."

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

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"GitLab's Windows version is yet not available and having this would be an improvement."

"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."

"When deploying the solution on cloud and the CI/CD pipeline, we have to define the steps and it becomes confusing."

"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."

"The solution could be faster."

"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."

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

"In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

"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 price is okay."

"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."

"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."

"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."

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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Educational Organization

26%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

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?

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...

Seeker vs Contrast Security Assess

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AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

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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