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GitLab vs OWASP Zap 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

GitLab
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (7th), Build Automation (3rd), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab2.5%
OWASP Zap2.7%
Other94.8%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Al Hassan LLC
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"The most valuable features of GitLab are the CI/CD pipeline and code management."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"We like the automatic deployment for different environments."
"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."
"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."
"It is a speedy platform compared to the others I have used, and I have also enjoyed using the platform as this solution offers a good user experience."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"The solution is very easy to use, the initial setup is straightforward, it is free due to the fact that it is open-source, the stability is very good, and the product has a strong community surrounding it to help with issues and troubleshooting."
"It can be used effectively for internal auditing."
"It updates repositories and libraries quickly."
"They offer free access to some other tools."
"OWASP Zap is straightforward to use. If someone doesn't have the budget for tools like Burp Suite, OWASP Zap is an excellent alternative."
"The pull request analysis is also very good."
"You can run it against multiple targets."
 

Cons

"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default."
"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."
"In my experience, GitLab is stable; however, sometimes it takes much time to start the runner and gets stuck in a pending situation, possibly due to traffic issues."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"We do face issues in our company when we run out of disk space."
"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."
"GitLab can improve the integration with third-party applications. It could be made easier. Additionally, having API control from my application could be helpful."
"It would be ideal if I could try some pre-built deployment scenarios so that I don't have to worry about whether the configuration sector team is doing it right or wrong. That would be very helpful."
"We have had stability issues a few times."
"The disadvantage of Zap is that we're unable to customize reports as it only has a single standard format."
"I'd like to see a kind of feature where we can just track what our last vulnerability was and how it has improved or not. More reports that can have some kind of base-lining, I think that would be a good feature too. I'm not sure whether it can be achieved and implement but I think that would really help."
"We're currently moving away from OWASP to PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional; it's more user-friendly with a better interface."
"I prefer Burp Suite to SWASP Zap because of the extensive coverage it offers."
"It's possibly just a limitation of the product itself but sometimes it won't scan a particular website so you have to manually go in and make some configuration changes."
"The forced browse has been incorporated into the program and it is resource-intensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."
"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."
"This solution is open source and free."
"The tool is open source."
"The tool is open-source."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?
OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.
What needs improvement with OWASP Zap?
The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postm...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. OWASP Zap and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.