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GitLab vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 30, 2024

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 Application Security Tools
10th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 26.4%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."
"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."
"The most valuable features of Gitlab are integration with CIE and the ability to rapidly deploy solutions, projects, and applications. It is very easy to use, and there are no complaints."
"We use GitLab in the new project for CI/CD, integration, and deployment."
"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."
"This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it."
"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"The depth features I have found most valuable. You receive a quick comprehensive comparison overview regarding the current release and the last release and what type of depths dependency or duplication should be used. This is going to help you to make a more readable code and have more flexibility for the engineers to understand how things should work when they do not know."
"The static code analysis is very good."
"It is an easy tool that you can deploy and configure. After that you can measure the history of your obligation and integrate it with other tools like GitLab or GitHub or Azure DevOps to do quality code analysis."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, the ability to drill down to the code, user-friendly, and the technical debt estimation."
"Using SonarQube benefits us because we are able to avoid the inclusion of malware in our applications."
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
 

Cons

"We have only seen a couple of issues on Gitlab, which we use for building some of the applications."
"In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD automation features specifically tailored for DigitalOcean would be beneficial."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"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 with variable environments."
"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
"The time it took for me to do the whole process was approximately two hours because I had to download, read the documentation, and do the configurations."
"We called support and complained but have not received any information as we use the free version. We had to fix it on our own and could not escalate it to the tool's developer."
"Our developers have complained about the Quality Gates and the number of false positives that this product reports."
"SonarQube needs to improve its support model. They do not work 24/7, and they do not provide weekend support in case things go wrong. They only have a standard 8:00 am to 5:00 pm support model in which you have to raise a support ticket and wait. The support model is not effective for premium customers."
"Depending on the tool's configuration, sometimes you get false alarms that are unimportant to you."
"During the setup process, we only had one issue related to the number of available files. To perform the analysis, you have quite a lot of available file handles, so we had to increase that limit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."
"The solution is free."
"The price is okay."
"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."
"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"It's an open-source product."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"We have a license with 125,000 lines of code. We did not purchase a lot of lines but it is specific to our code environment."
"Can try developer version for 14 days on the free trial."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

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.
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.
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...
Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?
I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...
Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?
SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...
How would you decide between Coverity and Sonarqube?
We researched Coverity, but in the end, we chose SonarQube. SonarQube is a tool for reviewing code quality and security. It helps to guide our development teams during code reviews by providing rem...
 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
Sonar
 

Learn More

 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.