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GitLab vs OWASP Zap comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

GitLab
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (10th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
11th
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 July 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.5%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 4.6%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements
The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) are highly valuable. Another important feature is the single source of repository, allowing efficient repository management and source code management. GitLab provides manageability by allowing us to manage source code effectively through separate repositories. Additionally, GitLab enables the creation of individual CI/CD pipelines for each repository, making software more agile. By integrating GitLab as a DevOps platform, we have enhanced agility, improved our time to market, and different teams can work collaboratively on various projects.
Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"In terms of impact from using GitLab as an all-in-one DevOps platform, it helped with my project development life cycle."
"GitLab offers a good interface for doing code reviews between two colleagues."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."
"The initial setup of GitLab is pretty simple, with no complications."
"The solution makes the CI/CD pipelines easy to execute."
"I have found the most valuable feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."
"The product helps users to scan and fix vulnerabilities in the pipeline."
"Automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy to use."
"The reporting is quite intuitive, which gives you a clear indication of what kind of vulnerability you have that you can drill down on to gather more information."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, it's very difficult."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"This solution has improved my organization because it has made us feel safer doing frequent deployments for web applications. If we have something really big, we might get some professional company in to help us but if we're releasing small products, we will check it ourselves with Zap. It makes it easier and safer."
"OWASP Zap is a good tool, one of my favorites for a long time, and I would recommend it."
 

Cons

"The documentation is confusing."
"GitLab could add a plugin to integrate with Kubernetes stuff."
"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."
"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."
"I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira."
"The documentation is lacking and out-of-date, it really needs more love."
"I would like to see a version of “repeater” within OWASP ZAP, a tool capable of sending from one to 1000 of the same requests, but with preselected modified fields, changing from a predetermined word ​list, or manually created."
"The reporting feature could be more descriptive."
"Deployment is somewhat complicated."
"The port scanner is a little too slow.​"
"Reporting format has no output, is cluttered and very long."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."
"The solution is free."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"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."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"The price is okay."
"We are using the open-source version."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"The tool is open-source."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"The tool is open source."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.
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 do you like most about OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...
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.
 

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: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.