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 8.6, while Travis CI is ranked #21 with an average rating of 6.0. GitLab holds a 16.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Travis CI’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution.

GitLab

Read 82 GitLab reviews

6,080 Views
4,974 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Travis CI

Read 2 Travis CI reviews

428 Views
410 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: April 2025).

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Build Automation

April 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 Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)

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 April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 16.6%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Travis CI is 0.7%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

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.

Read full review

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.

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

"GitLab's best feature is Actions."

"A user friendly solution."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the ability to upload scripts and make changes when needed and then reupload them. Additionally, the solution is user-friendly."

"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."

"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 best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish."

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

"GitLab is kind of an image of GitHub, so it gives us the flexibility to monitor our changes in the repos."

More GitLab pros

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

Cons

"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."

"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."

"GitLab would be improved with the addition of templates for deployment on local PCs."

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

"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."

"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."

"When deploying the solution on cloud and the CI/CD pipeline, we have to define the steps and it becomes confusing."

"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."

More GitLab cons

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different licensing options available, including a free limited-user license."

"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."

"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."

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

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 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 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 28% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

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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Tekton vs Travis CI

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

April 2025

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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

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, Jenkins and others in Build Automation. Updated: April 2025.

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