GitLab vs Polarion ALM comparison

GitLab and Siemens are both solutions in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category. GitLab is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. GitLab holds a 26.9% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 84 GitLab reviews

10,051 Views
8,300 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 22 Polarion ALM reviews

1,264 Views
859 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

GitLab

Polarion ALM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Polarion ALM and GitLab are competitors in the application lifecycle management and development operations sectors. While Polarion ALM is favored for its traceability and compliance features in regulated industries, GitLab's superior DevOps capabilities and CI/CD integration provide substantial benefits for agile environments.

Features: Polarion ALM offers customizable traceability, compliance management, and robust version control. GitLab excels in continuous integration, seamless deployment, and provides an all-in-one platform that simplifies workflows.

Room for Improvement: Polarion ALM could enhance its ease of use, reduce the complexity of its setup, and improve out-of-the-box functionalities. GitLab might expand its feature set, streamline its advanced settings, and enhance user onboarding processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Polarion ALM requires expert configuration and longer setup times, though its customer service is reliable. GitLab offers easier deployment with cloud-based options and responsive support, facilitated by comprehensive documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Polarion ALM incurs higher initial costs but yields strong ROI in regulatory-focused environments. GitLab's scalable pricing model caters to various teams, offering faster ROI through integrated functionalities readily available upon setup.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. Polarion ALM Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

April 2025

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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

GitLab

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 26.9%, down from 32.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

Featured Reviews

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.

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Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility

It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

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 of GitLab is its security."

"GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments."

"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."

"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."

"The stability is good."

"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."

"I like that you can use GitLab as a double-sided solution for both DevOps and version management. It's a good product for working in these two areas, and the user interface makes it easy to understand."

"Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective."

More GitLab pros

"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."

"The technical support is quite good."

"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."

"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."

"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."

"The software is stable."

"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"The pricing model of GitLab is an issue for me."

"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."

"Their RBAC is role-based access, which is fine but not very good."

"We would like to have easier tutorials. Their tutorials are too technical for a user to understand. They should be more detailed but less technical."

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

"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."

"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."

"The user interface could be more user-friendly. We do most of our operations through the website interface but it could be better."

More GitLab cons

"The solution can be improved by making it more user-friendly, and a server-based application rather than client based."

"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."

"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."

"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."

"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."

"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"GitLab is cheap."

"This is an open-source solution."

"We are using the open-source version."

"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."

"We are using the free version of GitLab."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"The solution is expensive."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

22%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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?

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

Polarion ALM ( /categories/application-lifecycle-management-alm-suites ) could see improvements in performance and scalability. The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing f...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) is a tool that delivers both document views and table views simultaneously. It organizes configurations according to norms and standards, making it s...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 25% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

April 2025

Download Polarion ALM product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

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.

GitLab

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

Sample Customers

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

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

April 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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