We compared SonarQube and GitLab based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
SonarQube and GitLab are both praised for their reasonable pricing, flexibility in licensing, and positive return on investment. SonarQube stands out with its comprehensive code quality features, user-friendly interface, and prompt customer support. Meanwhile, GitLab excels in robust version control, CI/CD pipelines, and collaboration tools, with users highlighting its intuitive interface and strong community support. Areas for improvement include enhancing analysis speed and user interface for SonarQube, as well as improving performance and project management features for GitLab.
Features: SonarQube stands out with features such as support for multiple languages, integration with DevOps pipelines, and accurate vulnerability detection. Meanwhile, GitLab impresses users with its robust version control capabilities, efficient CI/CD pipelines, and strong integration with other development tools.
Pricing and ROI: Regarding setup cost, SonarQube is described as straightforward and easy, with users appreciating its simplicity. On the other hand, GitLab's setup cost is also reported to be easy and straightforward, but no additional details are provided., SonarQube has been highly praised for its ability to improve code quality, detect vulnerabilities, and enhance project efficiency, resulting in cost savings and increased productivity. Similarly, GitLab has also yielded positive returns, satisfying users and proving to be a valuable investment.
Room for Improvement: SonarQube may benefit from improvements in analysis speed, user interface navigation, setup instructions, documentation clarity, occasional performance issues, and integration options. GitLab could enhance its user interface, performance, project management features, code review process, and navigation intuitiveness.
Deployment and customer support: User feedback on SonarQube indicated varying durations for implementation. Some users took 3 months for deployment and 1 week for setup, while others took 1 week for both. In contrast, user feedback on GitLab varied extensively in terms of deployment and setup durations., SonarQube's customer service is praised for its prompt and knowledgeable assistance, while GitLab is commended for consistently providing effective troubleshooting and helpful guidance. GitLab also offers detailed documentation and a strong community for collaboration and problem-solving.
The summary above is based on 84 interviews we conducted recently with SonarQube and GitLab users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."
"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 code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"We're only using the basic features of GitLab and haven't used any advanced features. The solution works fine, so that's what we like about GitLab. We're party using GitHub and GitLab. We have a GitHub server, while we use GitLab locally or only within our team, and it works okay. We don't have any significant problems with the solution. We also found the straightforward setup, stability, and scalability of GitLab valuable."
"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
"It provides the security that is required from a solution for financial businesses."
"There is a free version."
"It is an easy tool that you can deploy and configure. After that you can measure the history of your obligation and integrate it with other tools like GitLab or GitHub or Azure DevOps to do quality code analysis."
"Before you even compile, it can catch known vulnerability issues or patterns."
"The solution has a wide variety of features and an open-source community that you are able to learn Java, JavaScript, or any other programing language."
"We are using the Community edition. So, we don't have to incur any licensing costs. This is the best part."
"Any developer can easily identify issues using the process flow or steps provided by SonarQube. In terms of integration, SonarQube makes it quite easy, simplifying the steps for users."
"The most valuable features are the analysis and detection of issues within the application code."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."
"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"The pricing model of GitLab is an issue for me."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."
"The implementation of the solution is straightforward. However, we did have some initial initialization issues at the of the projects. I don't think it was SonarQube's fault. It was the way it was implemented in our organization because it's mainly integrated with many software, such as Jira, Confluence, and Butler."
"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."
"There could be better integration with other products."
"The solution could improve by having better-consulting services."
"It requires advanced heuristics to recognize more complex constructs that could be disregarded as issues."
"We did have some trouble with the LDAP integration for the console."
"If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time."
"I have found this solution creates more noise than competitors."
GitLab is ranked 6th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews while SonarQube is ranked 1st in Application Security Tools with 112 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.6, while SonarQube is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonarQube writes "Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages". GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, AWS CodePipeline, Tekton and TeamCity, whereas SonarQube is most compared with Checkmarx One, SonarCloud, Coverity, Veracode and Klocwork. See our GitLab vs. SonarQube report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) vendors.
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