We performed a comparison between GitLab and Contrast Security Assess based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison results: Based on the parameters we compared, GitLab comes out ahead of Contrast Security Assess. While both solutions’ core features have been rated favorably by their users, Contrast Security Assess’s potentially complex deployment and licensing plan leave room for improvement.
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"It is scalable."
"The solution's service delivery model is fantastic."
"We use the Git repository and tagging feature. We are a product-based company and use this solution to move to a forward or backward tag."
"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."
"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."
"GitLab is kind of an image of GitHub, so it gives us the flexibility to monitor our changes in the repos."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."
"We have only seen a couple of issues on Gitlab, which we use for building some of the applications."
"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."
"The solution could be faster."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."
Contrast Security Assess is ranked 31st in Application Security Tools with 11 reviews while GitLab is ranked 7th in Application Security Tools with 70 reviews. Contrast Security Assess is rated 8.8, while GitLab is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Contrast Security Assess writes "We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of GitLab writes "Powerful, mature, and easy to set up and manage". Contrast Security Assess is most compared with Veracode, Seeker, Fortify WebInspect and HCL AppScan, whereas GitLab is most compared with Microsoft Azure DevOps, Bamboo, SonarQube, AWS CodePipeline and Tekton. See our Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab report.
See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) 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.