We performed a comparison between GitHub and GitLab based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Result: Based on the reviews provided by users, GitHub and GitLab both seem to provide comprehensive and practical software development and project management tools. Long-time users find GitLab's customer service and responsiveness less reliable than GitHub's because they haven't had enough time to develop in that direction.
"The solution has been stable for us."
"The product has a good UI. It's simple and easy to access, and technical help is easily available. The two-factor authentication security is another valuable feature."
"This solution is just easy to use."
"The code sharing and updated history are valuable features."
"The solution can scale."
"We use GitHub as a repository."
"We are finding GitHub is very stable."
"I like the CI/CD features."
"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."
"The dashboard and interface make it easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"For us, Gitlab's most valuable feature is the integration with Cypress. We're using Cypress as an automation tool, so we're using GitLab as a tool for running in parallel."
"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."
"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."
"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."
"GitHub should provide more integration in their next release, including integrating with Jenkins, CI/CD and Jira."
"The onboarding process could be simplified."
"Our firewall was blocking cloning and downloading with SSH."
"It is difficult to merge a code or restore it to an older version."
"Github needs more storage."
"I would want to see some form of code security scanning implemented."
"In complex cases, we have to use the terminal for conflict resolution. If those conflicts could be resolved visually in the editor, that would be much better."
"There is a bit of a learning curve."
"The solution could improve by providing more integration into the CI/CD pipeline, an autocomplete search tool, and more supporting documentation."
"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 can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"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 could improve the patch repository. It does not have support for Conan patch version regions. Additionally, better support for Kubernetes deployment is needed as part of the package."
"We would like to have easier tutorials. Their tutorials are too technical for a user to understand. They should be more detailed but less technical."
GitHub is ranked 9th in Application Security Tools with 74 reviews while GitLab is ranked 6th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews. GitHub is rated 8.6, while GitLab is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of GitHub writes "Beneficial version control and continuous integration, but guides would be helpful". On the other hand, the top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". GitHub is most compared with Snyk, AWS CodeCommit, Fortify on Demand, Bitbucket and SonarQube, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, SonarQube, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline and Tekton. See our GitHub vs. GitLab report.
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We monitor all Application Security Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.