GitLab vs Travis CI comparison

GitLab and Travis CI are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while Travis CI is ranked #21 with an average rating of 6.0. GitLab holds a 12.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Travis CI’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution.

GitLab

Read 86 GitLab reviews

19,204 Views
4,417 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Travis CI

Read 2 Travis CI reviews

422 Views
422 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

GitLab

Travis CI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Travis CI and GitLab compete in the continuous integration and deployment domain. GitLab seems to have the upper hand due to its feature-rich environment, despite potentially higher costs.

Features: Travis CI provides valuable features like easy configuration with YAML, native support for various programming languages, and a quick setup process. GitLab stands out with a complete DevOps lifecycle solution, offering source code management, issue tracking, and application performance monitoring, showcasing its versatility compared to Travis CI's streamlined approach.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab offers a unified platform with flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options supported by detailed documentation and extensive integration capabilities, although setup might require more effort. Travis CI offers a straightforward cloud-based setup, reducing deployment complexity, but with less flexibility for customization. GitLab's model may be more complex but allows for greater scalability and support.

Pricing and ROI: Travis CI has a straightforward pricing model suitable for smaller teams or projects with budget constraints, potentially leading to quicker ROI due to low maintenance costs. GitLab's pricing is higher but delivers substantial ROI by streamlining the software development lifecycle for larger teams needing an all-in-one solution, providing broader value.

To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

August 2025

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Helped 867,497 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 Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)

Travis CI

Ranking in Build Automation

21st

Average Rating

6.0

Reviews Sentiment

3.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 12.6%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Travis CI is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	12.6%
Travis CI	1.2%
Other	86.2%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.

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Pravar Agrawal

Senior SRE at IBM

YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing

Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its convenience. I am able to trace back most of my changes up to a far distance in time and it helps me to analyze and see the older version of the code."

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

"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."

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

"Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what; this is the best feature which is useful for all companies."

"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."

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

More GitLab pros

"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."

Cons

"GitLab's Windows version is yet not available and having this would be an improvement."

"The integration could be slightly better."

"Their RBAC is role-based access, which is fine but not very good."

"GitLab can improve the integration with third-party applications. It could be made easier. Additionally, having API control from my application could be helpful."

"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."

"GitLab could improve by having more plugins and better user-friendliness."

"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"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."

More GitLab cons

"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version."

"GitLab is cheap."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"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."

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

"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."

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

"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."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	42

No data available

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 and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?

I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Travis CI?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Travis CI?

Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis workflows are integrated with any changes in my code. It will have different jobs, ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 34% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

September 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

August 2025

Download Travis CI product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab offers a secure and user-friendly platform for CI/CD pipeline management, code repository control, and collaboration, enhancing development speed and efficiency. It facilitates automation with extensive customization and tool integration, ideal for DevOps processes.

GitLab supports source code management, version control, and collaborative development. It's frequently used in CI/CD processes to automate builds and deployments while integrating DevOps practices. GitLab allows companies to manage repositories, automate pipelines, conduct code reviews, and maintain development lifecycles. The platform supports infrastructure and configuration management, enabling efficient code collaboration, deployment automation, and comprehensive repository handling. Many organizations commit and deploy developed code using GitLab's capabilities.

What are GitLab's most valuable features?

CI/CD Pipeline Management: Streamlines development through automated testing and deployment.
User-Friendly Interface: Ensures ease of collaboration and task automation.
Code Merging and Branching: Facilitates smooth code integration and version control.
Security Platform: Provides strong security features for safe development.
Tool Integration: Enhances functionality with diverse tool integration.

What benefits should users evaluate?

Development Speed: Accelerates processes through automation.
Collaboration Ease: Simplifies team interactions and workflow.
Customization Options: Offers extensive personalization for specific needs.
Comprehensive Documentation: Provides detailed guidance for users.
Secure Platform: Maintains integrity with robust security features.

In specific industries, GitLab serves as a backbone for source code management and CI/CD implementation. Companies leverage its capabilities for infrastructure management and deployment automation, thus streamlining project delivery timelines. Its ability to handle configuration management and code repositories effectively aids in maintaining development lifecycles, making it a preferred choice for organizations committed to enhancing their DevOps practices.

GitLab

Easily sync your GitHub projects with Travis CI and you'll be testing your code in minutes. Travis CI for private repositories has plans for every size project. With Travis CI testing your open source project is 100% free.

Travis CI

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

Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, GitHub and others in Build Automation. Updated: August 2025.

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