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 most valuable feature is help offered by the community for open-source projects."
"If you want to share documents, you can create articles and diagrams with GitHub and share."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"GitHub is good for collaboration because everyone can access it or we can restrict access to a few users. If I upload a file and share the URL, it's not restricted to a set number of users. Everyone with the link can download the files."
"There are no issues. It's simple, easy, and fully compatible from my perspective with Git."
"The most valuable aspects of GitHub are version control and parallel development. I also appreciate the forking part, which allows us to release a specific set of features to the environment."
"We can make a private repository."
"The learning curve is small."
"It scales well."
"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
"The tool helps to integrate CI/CD pipeline deployments. It is very easy to learn. Its security model is good."
"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."
"Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective."
"The solution is stable."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"A user friendly solution."
"The user interface on GitLab is better."
"I would want to see some form of code security scanning implemented."
"The security for this solution could be tightened up and improved."
"The only thing I see missing in GitHub is that it isn't very user friendly for key personnel who don't have in-depth, technical knowledge. In Jira, there are many functions to upload our test cases, and in GitHub we can only do it manually. There are functions which can be used to upload different files, but that still requires some technical knowledge. A layman cannot do it."
"There is room for improvement in terms of interface."
"The merging features can be improved."
"It would be beneficial if GitHub provided some security scanning for new libraries to ensure that there are no viruses in it."
"The initial setup and implementation could be easier, I had some difficulties with it at first but I don't have a development background."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"The integration and storage capabilities could be better."
"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."
"I would like to have some features to support peer review."
"Merge conflicts and repository maintenance could improve. If there is someone new to the system they would not know if there is a conflict."
GitHub is ranked 12th in Application Security Tools with 74 reviews while GitLab is ranked 7th 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, Bitbucket, Fortify on Demand and Qualys Web Application Scanning, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, SonarQube, AWS CodePipeline and Tekton. See our GitHub vs. GitLab report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors.
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.
