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 28.9% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 4.0% 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

10,458 Views
8,512 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 21 Polarion ALM reviews

1,311 Views
889 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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

March 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

7.2

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 (12th), 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 April 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 28.9%, down from 31.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.0%, up from 3.0% 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 merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."

"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."

"Everything is easy to configure and easy to work with."

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

"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."

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

"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."

"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."

More GitLab pros

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

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

"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."

"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."

"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."

"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."

"The solution could be faster."

"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."

"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."

More GitLab cons

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

"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."

"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."

"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."

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

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

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

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"GitLab is cheap."

"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."

"This is an open-source solution."

"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

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

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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

"It is an expensive product."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

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

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

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

26%

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?

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 29% of the time

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Compared 13% 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

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Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 28% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 16% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 8% of the time

TFS vs Polarion ALM

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

March 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

March 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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