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GitLab vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 30, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
11th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (13th), 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 December 2024, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 26.7%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable features are pipelines."
"In our software development lifecycle, GitLab is used as a component for code repository management. We use GitLab for several projects to handle code repositories. For other software projects, we use Bitbucket, but the use case for both is very similar."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the review, patch repo, and plans are in YAML."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"The product is simple."
"The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand."
"It easily ties into our continuous integration pipeline."
"If you want to have your code scanned and timed then this is a good tool."
"I follow Quality Gate's graduation model within organization, and it is extremely helpful for me to benchmark products."
"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."
"Offers multi-programming language support"
"I am only interested in the security features in SonarQube. There are plenty of features other features, such as test coverage, code anomalies, and pointer access are handled by the business logic teams. They get the reports and they have to fix them in JIRA or Bugzilla."
 

Cons

"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly. We do most of our operations through the website interface but it could be better."
"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
"GitLab should enhance its GitOps capability as they are currently using FluxCD, however, Argo CD is better and offers more features. GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."
"The solution could be faster."
"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."
"The solution could improve by providing more integration into the CI/CD pipeline, an autocomplete search tool, and more supporting documentation."
"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."
"The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple."
"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."
"A better design of the interface and add some new rules."
"Dynamic scanning is missing and there are some issues with security scanning."
"I would like to see more options for security, beyond the basics like SQL injection."
"There is need for support for the additional languages and ease of use in adding new rules for detecting issues."
"SonarQube could improve its static application security testing as per the industry standard."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"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."
"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"We use the solution free of cost."
"The beauty of this solution is the free open-source version is capable enough in doing pretty much what an enterprise-level version can do."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
"I think comparing the product to competitors it should be less expensive."
"We use the free version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required."
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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?
GitLab is mostly free, with potential costs arising from upgrade versions. There is a trial period of about six months during which it is free. Afterward, fees apply.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
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...
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: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.