GitLab vs GoCD comparison

GitLab and Thoughtworks are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while Thoughtworks is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5. GitLab holds a 16.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Thoughtworks’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of Thoughtworks users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 82 GitLab reviews

6,080 Views
4,974 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

GoCD

Read 7 GoCD reviews

667 Views
480 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

GitLab

GoCD

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

GoCD and GitLab compete in the continuous integration and delivery space. GitLab seems to hold the advantage due to its comprehensive feature set and strong market appeal.

Features: GoCD provides powerful pipeline management, efficient resource consumption, and value stream mapping to enhance project transparency. In contrast, GitLab offers extensive integrations, robust CI/CD pipelines, and a sophisticated code review system, making it a complete solution for the development lifecycle.

Room for Improvement: GoCD could benefit from a broader range of plugins and enhanced documentation for newcomers. It may also require improvements in user interface customization options. GitLab may improve in refining its complex features for better accessibility, offering more straightforward onboarding guides, and expanding its feature set usage to meet diverse development needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GoCD's lightweight architecture simplifies quick setups, focusing on standard workflow management. GitLab provides versatile deployment options, including cloud and hybrid setups, supported by extensive documentation and superior customer service channels for a seamless implementation experience.

Pricing and ROI: GoCD appeals with low initial costs due to its open-source nature, making it cost-effective. GitLab charges higher prices, justified by its extensive features and integration capabilities, which lead to favorable ROI through decreased need for additional tools.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. GoCD Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. GoCD

March 2025

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Helped 845,040 peers since 2012

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

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Ranking in Release Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), 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)

GoCD

Ranking in Build Automation

15th

Ranking in Release Automation

8th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 16.6%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GoCD is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

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.

Read full review

RajeshReddy

Dev Ops Engineer at Infosys

The UI is colorful, but the user experience must be improved

We can see all the pipelines with a simple search. The UI is colorful. The user experience is very rich. The product is very easy to learn if we know a bit of the basics. If we have someone to show us how to use it, it is very easy.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."

"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."

"GitLab is kind of an image of GitHub, so it gives us the flexibility to monitor our changes in the repos."

"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the automatic merging of code."

"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."

"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."

"When a developer checks in code, it is automatically built and deployed, and automated test cases are also run. We have extensive integration with GitLab, which helps us with source code management. We run the static code analysis using SonarQube."

More GitLab pros

"The UI is colorful."

"The most notable aspect is its user interface, which we find to be user-friendly and straightforward for deploying and comprehending pipelines. We have the ability to create multiple pipelines, and in addition to that, the resource consumption is impressive."

"GoCD's open-source nature is valuable."

"Permission separations mean that we can grant limited permissions for each team or team member."

Cons

"The integration could be slightly better."

"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."

"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."

"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."

"GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."

"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."

More GitLab cons

"The tool must be more user-friendly."

"The aspect that requires attention is the user management component. When integrating with BitLabs and authenticating through GitLab, there are specific features we desire. One important feature is the ability to import users directly from GitLab, along with their respective designations, and assign appropriate privileges based on that information. Allocating different privileges to users is a time-consuming process for us."

"It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be simplified."

"The documentation really should be improved by including real examples and more setup cases."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."

"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 licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"This is an open-source solution."

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

"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."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"This is an open-source solution and it is inexpensive."

"It's an open-source and free tool."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Retailer

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about GoCD?

The UI is colorful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GoCD?

The product is free of cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GoCD?

One area of product improvement is the access control system. It is difficult to assign different access levels because it relies on separate keys for developer and admin access, which could be sim...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 29% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 13% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 8% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Jenkins vs GoCD

Compared 24% of the time

GitHub Actions vs GoCD

Compared 17% of the time

Tekton vs GoCD

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GoCD

Compared 9% of the time

More GoCD Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

March 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

March 2025

Download GoCD product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

Adaptive ALM, Thoughtworks Go

Overview

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

GitLab

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers businesses a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility. It was designed for continuous delivery and the concepts essential to this practice are built in at the core.

Thoughtworks

Sample Customers

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

Ancestry.com, Barclay Card, AutoTrader, BT Financial Group, Gamesys, Nike, Vodafone, Haufe Lexware, Medidata, Hoovers

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. GoCD

March 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. GoCD

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. GoCD and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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