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Contrast Security Protect vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Contrast Security Protect
Ranking in Application Security Tools
34th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Protect is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 2.0%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab2.0%
Contrast Security Protect1.1%
Other96.9%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.
I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Role-based workflows have transformed daily deployments and improve team collaboration
GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process. The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps. The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly. For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities. GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother. Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"Contrast Security's support is great. They're willing to spend a lot of time on your problem."
"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The Protect solution allows applications to continue to run, even with known vulnerabilities, but will report or block attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities."
"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"The solution is stable."
"GitLab is a wholly complete solution and it is for this reason that I can recommend it to other users."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"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."
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the review, patch repo, and plans are in YAML."
"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."
 

Cons

"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."
"We're not using it much anymore because we had some performance issues."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"The solution could improve by having better integration."
"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"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."
"The documentation in GitLab could be improved a bit."
"This solution could be improved by adding modifications such as slack notifications."
"When deploying the solution on cloud and the CI/CD pipeline, we have to define the steps and it becomes confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"We are using the open-source version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The setup cost for GitLab is minimal since the team has its own minimal resource balancing. The costing falls into an intermediate stage and is impactful across all results within the team. It allo...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
There are many improvements that GitLab can implement, such as addressing the issue of caching. Currently, when I have multiple tasks to merge or attempt multiple merges, the CI/CD and overall GitL...
What is your primary use case for GitLab?
My main use case for GitLab is as a version control system that we are using. Currently, I am working on an end-to-end AI pipeline, and I have deployed my whole code using GitLab so that all things...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Protect
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
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 Contrast Security Protect vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.