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 #7 with an average rating of 8.3. GitLab holds a 30.4% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 82 GitLab reviews

10,610 Views
8,690 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 20 Polarion ALM reviews

1,341 Views
925 Comparison Views

86% 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

January 2025

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Helped 841,004 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

GitLab

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (8th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

7th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 30.4%, up from 30.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 3.6%, up from 3.1% 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

"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."

"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."

"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."

"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."

"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."

"This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it."

"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."

"GitLab is kind of an image of GitHub, so it gives us the flexibility to monitor our changes in the repos."

More GitLab pros

"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."

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

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

"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."

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

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

"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

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

"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."

"It can be free for commercial use."

"The solution could improve by providing more integration into the CI/CD pipeline, an autocomplete search tool, and more supporting documentation."

"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."

"The solution could be faster."

"I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira."

"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."

More GitLab cons

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

"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."

"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."

"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."

"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."

"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We are currently using the open-source version."

"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."

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

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."

"This is an open-source solution."

"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."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is expensive."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

28%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

25%

Computer Software Company

15%

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?

I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system. This could greatly enhance requirement checking, improve form, content, and clarity, an...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

We use Polarion ALM for software development, including requirements management, testing, change requests, and task tracking. We set up the environment by configuring items and reports based on use...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 32% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 11% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 8% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 28% of the time

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 26% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 16% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 7% of the time

TFS vs Polarion ALM

Compared 2% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

February 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

February 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

January 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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