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GitHub vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
GitHub's community support is valued for responsiveness, but official support receives mixed reviews on consistency and responsiveness.
Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab support receives mixed feedback; while some find it helpful, others rely on community forums or internal resources.
The technical support from GitHub is generally good, and they communicate effectively.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
6.9
GitHub users seek enhanced integrations, security, user interface, DevOps, AI, search, navigation, project management, reporting, and compliance features.
Sentiment score
5.7
GitLab needs improved integrations, security, user-friendly interface, expanded capabilities, better CI/CD, project management, and simplified pricing and support.
I would like to see some AI functionality included in GitHub, similar to the features seen in GitLab, to enhance productivity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
GitHub efficiently scales for small to large teams, managing thousands of developers, extensive code, and complex deployments seamlessly.
Sentiment score
7.5
GitLab is praised for efficient scalability across environments and team sizes, with flexible configurations and cloud integration capabilities.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
6.4
Enterprise users find GitHub cost-effective despite challenging license management and tier-based pricing, with extra support incurring additional charges.
Sentiment score
5.7
GitLab pricing offers flexible plans with free tiers and paid options for enhanced features, considered competitive but sometimes costly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.7
GitHub is stable and reliable, effectively managing workloads with few issues, praised for high availability and suitability for companies.
Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab is praised for stability, with users experiencing rare minor issues, ensuring reliable performance and high user satisfaction.
It provides a reliable environment for code management.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.7
GitHub provides advanced code management, collaboration, and security features, integrating seamlessly with tools to support development needs efficiently.
Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab offers comprehensive CI/CD, seamless merging, robust management, automation, scalability, and extensive integration for DevOps support.
GitHub Actions allow for creating multiple jobs that run in different stages such as build, test, and deploy, which enable better visibility and control over the deployment pipeline.
 

Categories and Ranking

GitHub
Ranking in Application Security Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Version Control (3rd)
GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (10th), 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 November 2024, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of GitHub is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AjayKrishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces project delivery times and costs
I think one area where GitHub could improve is its search and navigation functionality within repositories. For example, we use IDEs like IntelliJ or Visual Studio Code when developing code. These IDEs allow us to easily navigate from one piece of code to another file where a method is being called. It would be really helpful if the solution could add this navigation feature. It would allow us to move from one class file to another more easily, helping us search quicker and follow the code flow completely within GitHub. This would be more convenient than having to import the code into our local IDE to look at the code flow and navigate through it. Adding this kind of IDE-like navigation within the tool would make the user experience more seamless and efficient.
Corné den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage
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. In terms of additional features, nothing comes to mind. One of the potential pitfalls is to keep adding new features and functionalities. They can just improve some of the existing features to make it high-end, top-quality. I don't have any substantial experience with agile planning. I don't know the industries GitLab is in, and I don't know why they make decisions like this, but as a customer, I would rather see them invest in improving the basic agile planning functionalities rather than adding, for example, portfolio planning features. That's because if I'm going to do portfolio planning, I probably will also need a lot of business users. I'm not sure if I want them in GitLab, I'd rather have them in Jira collaborating with me on portfolio planning. That's way better fitted for that type of work.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitHub?
The control is the most valuable feature as developers can work on a single code.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub?
I have not paid for GitHub as I use the free version for personal projects. Organizations may take separate servers from GitHub based on their needs, yet I am unaware of the pricing details.
What needs improvement with GitHub?
GitHub could improve in resolving conflicts when multiple developers modify the same line of code. Introducing a feature to manage and resolve conflicts directly within the application rather than ...
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 needs improvement with GitLab?
The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern. While GitLab has a lot of documentation, the complexity and volume can be overwhelming, especially for new learners. Structur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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Fuzzit
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dominion Enterprises, NASA, Braintree, SAP, 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
Find out what your peers are saying about GitHub vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.