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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
8th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
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
114
Ranking in other categories
Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.9%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.6%, down from 27.1% 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

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"The solution is stable."
"If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines."
"The stability is good."
"A user friendly solution."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."
"The stability is good."
"We consider it a handy tool that helps to resolve our issues immediately."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"Integrate it into the developers' workbench so that they can bench check their code against what will be done in the server-based audit version."
"This solution has helped with the integration and building of our CICD pipeline."
"SonarQube has a lot of value, it reviews the basic coding standards and security vulnerabilities of code that help to reduce issues."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"SonarQube is admin friendly."
 

Cons

"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."
"Even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still."
"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."
"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc."
"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"After scanning our code and generating a report, it would be helpful if SonarQube could also generate a solution to fix vulnerabilities in the report."
"The solution could improve the management reports by making them easier to understand for the technical team that needs to review them."
"We've been using the Community Edition, which means that we get to use it at our leisure, and they're kind enough to literally give it to us. However, it takes a fair amount of effort to figure out how to get everything up and running. Since we didn't go with the professional paid version, we're not entitled to support. Of course that could be self-correcting if we were to make the step to buy into this and really use it. Then their technical support would be available to us to make strides for using it better."
"Their dashboarding is very limited. They can improve their dashboards for multiple areas, such as security review, maintainability, etc. They have all this information, so they should publish all this information on the dashboard so that the users can view the summary and then analyze it further. This is something that I would like to see in the next version."
"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."
"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
"There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GitLab is cheap."
"The price is okay."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"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."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"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."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than competitors. However, it works better than competitors."
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"This solution is free."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
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
 

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.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.