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GitLab vs OWASP Zap comparison

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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 (8th), Build Automation (3rd), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), 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)
15th
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 September 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.6%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab2.6%
OWASP Zap2.6%
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

"GitLab is a very good solution because you can completely maintain your code and have a number of developers working on the same project."
"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."
"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."
"I previously used Gerrit and I prefer GitLab, as it is much better in the interface and integration, and it is more than only Git software, it is more of a complete package."
"The stability is good."
"GitLab helps me save time and provide financial benefits, as keeping track of the updated version and the changes is money and time-saving."
"CI/CD and GitLab scanning are the most valuable features."
"In our software development lifecycle, GitLab is used as a component for code repository management. We use GitLab for several projects to handle code repositories. For other software projects, we use Bitbucket, but the use case for both is very similar."
"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."
"The product has improved our application security engagement, helps with our in-house review so we sometimes don't need an external third-party tester, and once we get it from OWASP Zap, we have an idea of the inherent vulnerabilities in the application, which is a plus to save cost and improve our application accuracy practice."
"OWASP is the best."
"It can be used effectively for internal auditing."
"ZAP is easy to use. The automated scan is a powerful feature. You can simulate attacks with various parameters. ZAP integrates well with SonarQube."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"Simple to use, good user interface."
"This is a very mature tool; it is capable of facilitating the work of many security experts, and I highly recommend it for beginners and advanced users when some other tools fail to catch traffic."
 

Cons

"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."
"The documentation in GitLab could be improved a bit."
"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. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."
"The solution could be faster."
"I believe GitLab can be improved by making integration with other platforms a little easier."
"GitLab is not responding quickly enough to our request. Technical support could be better and their response time needs improvement to respond more quickly."
"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"We have had stability issues a few times."
"OWASP Zap could benefit from a noise cancellation feature like that of Burp Suite Professional, where AI helps reduce certain non-critical findings."
"The technical support team must be proactive."
"We get too many false positives and that should definitely be improved."
"The documentation is lacking and out-of-date, it really needs more love."
"We're currently moving away from OWASP to PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional; it's more user-friendly with a better interface."
"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms. They should expand their capabilities for broader coverage of business logic flaws and complex issues."
"Deployment is somewhat complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."
"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."
"This is an open-source solution."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"It's free. It's good for us because we don't know what the extent of our use will be yet. It's good to start with something free and easy to use."
"The tool is open source."
"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."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"This solution is open source and free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.