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GitHub Actions vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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

GitHub Actions
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 11.1%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 16.6%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Muzammil Riaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers version control, automated script execution and reduces manual efforts
Its integration and deployment are quite easy. You need to create a YAML file in your project, detailing configurations within this file. It integrates itself, requiring you to specify titles, descriptions, parameters, and a trigger scheduler if needed. Apart from that, it's just a simple YAML file, so there's no need for complex configurations. In one project, I used GitHub to automate an application related to email marketing, focusing on actions for data scraping. This required running scripts daily, sometimes even twice or thrice a day. Manually executing these scripts is inefficient and overly reliant on individual team members. However, by integrating the project with GitHub Actions, we automated script execution. Triggers were set up to initiate the pipeline automatically with every new commit or push to a branch. Additionally, we implemented schedulers to run pipelines at predetermined times, like 9 PM or 2 PM. Another enhancement was executing five tests in parallel through data actions, making the process more robust. GitHub Actions also offers stepwise execution details, greatly aiding in understanding and managing workflows. I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations.
Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."
"It is easy to use, especially if you are accustomed to using GitHub."
"GitHub Actions is a beautiful tool that integrates smoothly with all major tools, reducing CI/CD work by 30% to 40%."
"GitHub Actions is valuable for its ease of use and integration."
"The main benefit is collaboration. It allows us to easily collaborate with other developers, regardless of location. For example, we can collaborate with both our African and German colleagues seamlessly. It's platform-agnostic, so it is flexible and not tied to any OS, so we can work on Linux, Windows, web, and even Oracle applications. It's flexible, reliable, and overall an excellent tool for our needs."
"I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to just 8 to 10 minutes through these optimizations."
"GitHub Actions can be easily configured, especially for environment variables and secrets. The UI is understandable and user-friendly for setting up CI/CD pipelines. I prefer tools like GitLab, where the pipeline starts quickly and is accessible near the commits for easy access. However, many CI/CD tools are interchangeable due to similar features of GitHub Actions and other similar tools."
"It is user-friendly, with clear and organized processes, making it easy to navigate and work with."
"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."
"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."
"GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments."
"The scalability is good."
 

Cons

"Switching between hosted and self-hosted agents can be a bit complex, as self-hosted agents need to be provisioned in platforms like Azure or AWS."
"The reporting capabilities are somewhat limited."
"The main challenge I've experienced is with integration, particularly uploading to OneDrive, which was more complex compared to Google Drive or AWS S3 bucket."
"In terms of improvements, I think better logging for debugging purposes would be helpful, especially for complex workflows."
"My company would want to see some AI features in the tool as it can add value to the product."
"We can leverage this database tool to manage everything within our environment and data burners, allowing for customization and execution. An additional advantage is the capability to modify aspects like file size, making processes more efficient and faster across the pipelines. Regarding improvements or implementations, I believe there should be enhancements made to the deployment tool. It should be integrated as part of the solution. Infrastructure-wise, we already have tools like GitHub and RobSpot, and data enables us to automate various processes, which is quite beneficial. As for further enhancements, I'm uncertain. I've shared everything I know. However, if there's something specific you'd like to see in future releases, a feature that may not exist yet but would be desirable, I can't provide any input on that matter."
"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."
"Sometimes incremental steps should be taken during deployment instead of trying to execute all tasks simultaneously, particularly when dealing with AWS EKS clusters and Helm charts."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"I would like to see AI support in GitLab."
"GitLab's UI could be improved."
"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."
"GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc."
"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."
"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."
"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."
"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."
"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."
"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."
"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."
"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."
"Regarding pricing, I would rate GitLab as moderately priced, maybe around a seven or eight out of ten. It could be more flexible for clients but generally offers good value."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"GitLab is cheap."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitHub Actions?
I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?
I pay approximately five dollars per developer per month. I created a GitHub organization for managing users.
What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?
GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications. I currently rely on GitHub Actions for web applications but have to use another tool for mobile apps.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 GitHub Actions vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.