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GitLab vs Semgrep comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
Semgrep
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
18th
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Supply Chain Management Software (3rd), Static Code Analysis (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.1%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Semgrep is 2.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab2.1%
Semgrep2.6%
Other95.3%
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.
Manjunath Maneppagol - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
Context-aware code analysis has reduced noise and now improves developer experience with actionable security findings
I have consistently observed that their scan time is an issue for mono repos. Sometimes with their AI-based scanning, when you triage that scan, the scan never completes or finishes(, which makes it difficult. Another consistent issue is that whenever you have a new repo to onboard to the platform, the tool ideally should detect the master branch by default. However, sometimes the tool fails to identify it and will never scan it unless manually somebody looks into it and fixes the issue. Although their support team is really good, this issue was present six or eight months ago during the POC and is still present now. If it is affecting multiple customers, it should be prioritized and fixed. I would say that their integration aspects could have been improved. I see a lot of different security solutions that provide flexibility to the security teams based on Jira project, team divisions, Slack, and all those can be very much easily customized. Semgrep needs to work on the enhancement of their notification capabilities. Currently, they are working on identifying business logic vulnerabilities or privilege escalation vulnerabilities by looking at the code, and they should continue to focus on and improve this effort. Regarding stability, whenever you have a mono-repo which is a very large repository, the scan never finishes or the scan never kicks in. At that time, you have to reach out to the support team and ask them to expand the resources in the back end to fix it. This is an issue I keep seeing often on that platform.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features."
"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 solution is stable."
"GitLab has positively impacted our organization by making our code very secure because GitLab prides itself on security."
"I have had no problem with the stability of the solution."
"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."
"Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective."
"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."
"The best part of Semgrep is its ease of integration with CI/CD pipelines and how it is a developer-friendly tool."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write our custom rules."
"Compared to other competitors in the market, the AI-backed capability is the biggest strength of Semgrep."
 

Cons

"The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required."
"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."
"It can be free for commercial use."
"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."
"GitLab could consider introducing a code-scanning tool. Purchasing such tools from external markets can incur charges, which might not be favorable. Integrating these features into GitLab would streamline the pipeline and make it more convenient for users."
"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."
"Atlassian offers more products than GitLab. GitLab offers source control management, version control and collaboration between developers. Atlassian offers features on top of this as well as more integration points for developers."
"In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents."
"I have consistently observed that their scan time is an issue; sometimes with their AI-based scanning, when you triage that scan, the scan never completes or finishes, which makes it difficult."
"There should be more information on how to acquire the system, catering to beginners in application security, to make it more user-friendly."
"However, as a tool it is really complex to maintain and to use, and it has a huge price tag."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"The price is okay."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."
"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."
"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."
"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
No data available
 

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 setup cost was moderate and not very high. For GitLab SaaS, the initial setup cost was minimal, while self-managed GitLab involved infrastructure, VM storage backups, runner configuration, and ...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain. YAML syntax is strict, and errors are easy to make, while debugging pipeline logic ca...
What needs improvement with Semgrep?
I have consistently observed that their scan time is an issue for mono repos. Sometimes with their AI-based scanning, when you triage that scan, the scan never completes or finishes(, which makes i...
What is your primary use case for Semgrep?
I have been working with Semgrep for almost a year, approximately six to eight months on and off. In my current organization, I have a strong experience for SAST solution POCs, and I have conducted...
What advice do you have for others considering Semgrep?
You should primarily focus on what your use case is and why you are moving out. If you are moving out just from the perspective of cost, I do not think Semgrep is the best solution for you. However...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
Semgrep Code, Semgrep Supply Chain, Semgrep AppSec Platform
 

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
Policygenius, Tide, Lyft, Thinkific, FloQast, Vanta, and Fareportal
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Semgrep and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.