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Black Duck vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.2
Black Duck improved efficiency by identifying vulnerabilities early, saving time, streamlining audits, reducing manual effort, and enhancing code security.
Sentiment score
7.6
GitLab improves ROI by increasing efficiency, reducing deployment time, and enhancing DevOps through cost-saving, automation, and vulnerability management.
If you're using it on critical external programs where there is regulatory compliance on ensuring that the source code is clean from open-source, there's substantial ROI.
Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate.
We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
9.3
Black Duck support is praised for professionalism and speed, but faces inconsistent feedback, response delays, and suggests chatbot integration improvements.
Sentiment score
6.8
GitLab's support varies by license; paid users praise responsiveness, while free version users rely on community forums and documentation.
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
We have rarely needed to escalate issues to technical support since GitLab usually runs seamlessly.
I have interacted with architects for some advice during the implementation, and they were prompt in their response.
I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is scalable, praised for cloud support and integration, but pricing may deter smaller firms despite versatility.
Sentiment score
7.4
GitLab's scalable container architecture supports diverse environments, flexible deployment, and smooth integration, despite some configuration and scaling challenges.
I would rate the scalability of Black Duck 8 or 9.
It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.
We're transitioning to OpenShift for future scalability with increased user numbers.
For scaling, other deployment options from GitLab's side need to be adopted.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is highly stable, reliable, with minimal issues; users recommend against transitioning to Hub due to potential problems.
Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mainly under heavy load or during updates.
I have not encountered any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.
The updates are frequent and demanding, happening at least once a week due to security reasons.
 

Room For Improvement

Black Duck needs better integration, speed, UI, documentation, pricing, security, scalability, and support for improved user experience.
GitLab users seek improved CI/CD automation, integrations, user interface, project management, security, pricing, and support for enhanced usability.
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers.
Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part.
It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.
It is essential to conduct proper testing, such as unit tests and code coverage, within the SDLC pipelines.
GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly.
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck's pricing ranges from $10,000 to $70,000, with unlimited users for code size, though some find it expensive.
GitLab provides flexible pricing with open-source access and paid tiers, catering to different enterprise needs and budgets.
Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
The price is high, and it limits user accessibility.
 

Valuable Features

Black Duck excels in vulnerability scanning, license management, and policy management, offering strong UI and seamless Docker integration.
GitLab excels in UI, CI/CD, code management, and integration, offering user-friendly, efficient, and scalable development and deployment features.
The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the composition analysis feature, which is effective for security risk management.
Black Duck's ability to identify dependencies very accurately has been most valuable in identifying and mitigating risks.
The software composition analysis is most effective for security risk management.
As we implement automated testing and DevSecOps, it speeds up the process by forty to sixty percent.
The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.
By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 19.3%, down from 22.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 4.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements
The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
4%
Educational Organization
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
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.
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.
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...
 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.