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GitLab vs Polarion ALM comparison

GitLab and Siemens are both solutions in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category. GitLab is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. GitLab holds a 26.9% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Siemens users who would recommend it.
GitLab
Read 84 GitLab reviews
  • 10,051 Views
  • 8,300 Comparison Views
97% willing to recommend
Polarion ALM
Read 22 Polarion ALM reviews
  • 1,264 Views
  • 859 Comparison Views
87% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Polarion ALM and GitLab are competitors in the application lifecycle management and development operations sectors. While Polarion ALM is favored for its traceability and compliance features in regulated industries, GitLab's superior DevOps capabilities and CI/CD integration provide substantial benefits for agile environments.

Features: Polarion ALM offers customizable traceability, compliance management, and robust version control. GitLab excels in continuous integration, seamless deployment, and provides an all-in-one platform that simplifies workflows.

Room for Improvement: Polarion ALM could enhance its ease of use, reduce the complexity of its setup, and improve out-of-the-box functionalities. GitLab might expand its feature set, streamline its advanced settings, and enhance user onboarding processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Polarion ALM requires expert configuration and longer setup times, though its customer service is reliable. GitLab offers easier deployment with cloud-based options and responsive support, facilitated by comprehensive documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Polarion ALM incurs higher initial costs but yields strong ROI in regulatory-focused environments. GitLab's scalable pricing model caters to various teams, offering faster ROI through integrated functionalities readily available upon setup.

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To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. Polarion ALM Report (Updated: April 2025).
Buyer's Guide
GitLab vs. Polarion ALM
April 2025
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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 Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 26.9%, down from 32.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.2%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
 

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.
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Dina Bindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility
It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.
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

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"It is scalable."
"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."
"Everything is easy to configure and easy to work with."
"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."
"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is compatible with GitHub. The product's integration capabilities are sufficient for our small company of 35 people."
"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."
More GitLab pros
"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."
"The software is stable."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
More Polarion ALM pros
 

Cons

"I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing with variable environments."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"Based on what I know so far, its integration with Kubernetes is not so good. We have to develop many things to make it work. We have to acquire third-party components to work with Kubernetes."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"GitLab could improve by having more plugins and better user-friendliness."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
More GitLab cons
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"Integration requires a lot of effort. You typically need to work with an implementation partner to get it done. Most connectors available for Polarion ALM are paid. Unlike other vendors offering several standard connectors for free, integrating third-party software with Polarion ALM involves discussing and coordinating with the third-party software providers, which requires effort."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
More Polarion ALM cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"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 cheap."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"The price is okay."
More GitLab pricing and cost advice
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The solution is expensive."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"It is an expensive product."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
22%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

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 Polarion ALM?
It is a very stable solution.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM ( /categories/application-lifecycle-management-alm-suites ) could see improvements in performance and scalability. The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing f...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) is a tool that delivers both document views and table views simultaneously. It organizes configurations according to norms and standards, making it s...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time
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Compared 5% of the time
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Compared 29% of the time
Jira vs Polarion ALM Logo
Jira vs Polarion ALM
Compared 25% of the time
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM Logo
Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM
Compared 15% of the time
Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM Logo
Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM
Compared 8% of the time
TFS vs Polarion ALM Logo
TFS vs Polarion ALM
Compared 2% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
GitLab
May 2025
GitLab reportDownload GitLab product report
Buyer's Guide
Polarion ALM
May 2025
Polarion ALM reportDownload Polarion ALM product report
 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
No data available
 

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

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens
 

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
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Buyer's Guide
GitLab vs. Polarion ALM
April 2025
Free Report: GitLab vs. Polarion ALM
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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