FOSSA vs GitLab comparison

FOSSA and GitLab are both solutions in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category. FOSSA is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.0, while GitLab is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4. FOSSA holds a 3.8% mindshare in SCA, compared to GitLab’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of FOSSA users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of GitLab users who would recommend it.

FOSSA

Read 15 FOSSA reviews

2,219 Views
1,482 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

GitLab

Read 81 GitLab reviews

2,123 Views
1,796 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

FOSSA

GitLab

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

GitLab and FOSSA compete in the software development and deployment category. GitLab seems to have the upper hand in CI/CD pipeline management and integration, while FOSSA stands out in open-source license compliance and legal collaboration.

Features: GitLab offers effective continuous integration, code review, and branch management, facilitating collaborative development. It integrates DevOps and version control, providing user-friendly deployment and security features. FOSSA specializes in open-source management and compliance, with a robust policy engine automating license scanning and offering quick feedback on security issues.

Room for Improvement: GitLab faces integration challenges, especially with non-Kubernetes environments, and seeks advancements in metrics and third-party tool integration. Users also express concerns over pricing and cloud-native features. FOSSA needs to enhance user experience, dashboard functionalities, security scans, and project categorization, with improved policy documentation as frequently requested.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab supports various deployment options, including public, private, on-premises, and hybrid clouds, with community-based support needing improved responsiveness. FOSSA, primarily deploying in public and on-premises settings, has knowledgeable support but could improve onboarding and documentation for better user experiences.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers free and premium tiers, with the higher tiers seen as costly for smaller teams. Users consider the pricing reasonable but note significant cost jumps between tiers. FOSSA's competitive pricing, although not cheap, provides significant ROI, reducing compliance workloads and offering a licensing model that aligns with user utilization patterns.

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

Buyer's Guide

FOSSA vs. GitLab

January 2025

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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

FOSSA

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (10th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (9th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of FOSSA is 3.8%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 4.7%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Featured Reviews

Hanumanth Ramsetty

Software Engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

Proactively mitigate deployment vulnerabilities with seamless dependency tracking

Before using FOSSA, we could only identify issues after deployment in the Cloud Run. Now, with FOSSA, we identify dependency issues or vulnerabilities during the CI phase itself. This proactive approach has eliminated the need to search the internet for solutions, as FOSSA provides updated recommendations automatically. This has made the process more efficient and mitigated risks before deployment.

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 most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."

"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."

"I found FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine to be accurate and that it was tuned appropriately to the settings that we were looking for. The policy engine is pretty straightforward... I find it to be very straightforward to make small modifications to, but it's very rare that we have to make modifications to it. It's easy to use. It's a four-category system that handles most cases pretty well."

"I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results."

"FOSSA provided us with contextualized, easily actionable intelligence that alerted us to compliance issues. I could tell FOSSA exactly what I cared about and they would tell me when something was out of policy. I don't want to hear from the compliance tool unless I have an issue that I need to deal with. That was what was great about FOSSA is that it was basically "Here's my policy and only send me an alert if there's something without a policy." I thought that it was really good at doing that."

"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."

"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."

"One of the things that I really like about FOSSA is that it allows you to go very granular. For example, if there's a package that's been flagged because it's subject to a license that may be conflicts with or raises a concern with one of the policies that I've set, then FOSSA enables you to go really granular into that package to see which aspects of the package are subject to which licenses. We can ultimately determine with our engineering teams if we really need this part of the package or not. If it's raising this flag, we can make really actionable decisions at a very micro level to enable the build to keep pushing forward."

More FOSSA pros

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

"The most valuable functionality of GitLab, for me, is the DevOps. Besides the normal source control based on Git, I find the Auto DevOps features most important in the solution."

"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."

"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."

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

"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

"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

"One thing that can sometimes be difficult with FOSSA is understanding all that it can do. One of the ways that I've been able to unlock some of those more advanced features is through conversations with the absolutely awesome customer success team at FOSSA, but it has been a little bit difficult to find some of that information separately on my own through FAQs and other information channels that FOSSA has. The improvement is less about the product itself and more about empowering FOSSA customers to know and understand how to unlock its full potential."

"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."

"I want the product to include binary scanning which is missing at the moment. Binary scanning includes code and component matching through dependency management. It also includes the actual scanning and reverse engineering of the boundaries and finding out what is inside."

"We have seen some inaccuracies or incompleteness with the distribution acknowledgments for an application, so there's certainly some room for improvement there. Another big feature that's missing that should be introduced is snippet matching, meaning, not just matching an entire component, but matching a snippet of code that had been for another project and put in different files that one of our developers may have created."

"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."

"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."

"FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually."

"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."

More FOSSA cons

"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."

"GitLab would be improved with the addition of templates for deployment on local PCs."

"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."

"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."

"Perhaps the integration could be better."

"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."

"GitLab's UI could be improved."

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

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."

"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."

"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."

"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."

"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."

"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."

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

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

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

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

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

29%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

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 FOSSA?

I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?

The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...

See all answers

What needs improvement with FOSSA?

FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

Fortify Static Code Analyzer vs FOSSA

Compared 4% of the time

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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

Buyer's Guide

FOSSA

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

GitLab

January 2025

Download GitLab product report

Also Known As

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Fuzzit

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FOSSA

GitLab

Overview

Up to 90% of any piece of software is from open source, creating countless dependencies and areas of risk to manage. FOSSA is the most reliable automated policy engine for legal teams to maintain license compliance, security to fix vulnerabilities, and engineering to improve code quality across the entire software supply chain. As the only developer-native open source management platform, FOSSA fully integrates with your existing CI/CD pipeline to provide complete visibility and context earlier in the software development lifecycle. For the first time, teams can collaboratively shift left and audit, analyze, control, and remediate license issues and vulnerabilities right in their existing workflows.

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

AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent

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

Buyer's Guide

FOSSA vs. GitLab

January 2025

Free Report: FOSSA vs. GitLab

Find out what your peers are saying about FOSSA vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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