GitLab vs Travis CI comparison

GitLab and Travis CI are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while Travis CI is ranked #21 with an average rating of 6.0. GitLab holds a 15.0% mindshare in BA, compared to Travis CI’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution.

GitLab

Read 85 GitLab reviews

5,016 Views
4,048 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Travis CI

Read 2 Travis CI reviews

391 Views
276 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

GitLab

Travis CI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Travis CI and GitLab compete in the continuous integration and deployment domain. GitLab seems to have the upper hand due to its feature-rich environment, despite potentially higher costs.

Features: Travis CI provides valuable features like easy configuration with YAML, native support for various programming languages, and a quick setup process. GitLab stands out with a complete DevOps lifecycle solution, offering source code management, issue tracking, and application performance monitoring, showcasing its versatility compared to Travis CI's streamlined approach.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab offers a unified platform with flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options supported by detailed documentation and extensive integration capabilities, although setup might require more effort. Travis CI offers a straightforward cloud-based setup, reducing deployment complexity, but with less flexibility for customization. GitLab's model may be more complex but allows for greater scalability and support.

Pricing and ROI: Travis CI has a straightforward pricing model suitable for smaller teams or projects with budget constraints, potentially leading to quicker ROI due to low maintenance costs. GitLab's pricing is higher but delivers substantial ROI by streamlining the software development lifecycle for larger teams needing an all-in-one solution, providing broader value.

To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: June 2025).

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Build Automation

June 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 Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (10th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)

Travis CI

Ranking in Build Automation

21st

Average Rating

6.0

Reviews Sentiment

3.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 15.0%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Travis CI is 0.9%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

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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Pravar Agrawal

Senior SRE at IBM

YAML-based configuration and simple deployment but user interface needs modernizing

Travis CI is an okay tool, and I am forced to use it as part of my job. I don't maintain it; it is running somewhere else, and I don't have control over it. The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010. It is very basic and designed for lightweight CI work, and it cannot handle heavy CI. You cannot do branched flows, and you will have to write shell scripts to send calls here and there. The pipelines are not as detailed as some other CI/CD tools. If Travis is down, you don't have any control over it and need to reach out to their customer support.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"CI/CD is valuable for me."

"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."

"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."

"Git hosting has an integration with ACD which is why we liked this solution in the first place."

"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."

"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."

"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."

More GitLab pros

"The only thing I like about Travis CI is that you have a YAML file to define a Travis flow."

Cons

"The price of GitLab could improve, it is high."

"Their RBAC is role-based access, which is fine but not very good."

"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."

"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."

"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."

"When deploying the solution on cloud and the CI/CD pipeline, we have to define the steps and it becomes confusing."

"GitLab doesn't have AWS integration. It would be better to have integration with other container management environments beyond Kubernetes. It has very good integration with Kubernetes, but it doesn't have good integration with, for example, AWS, ETS, etc."

"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."

More GitLab cons

"The interface is very basic and not user-friendly; it feels like it was stuck in 2010."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."

"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."

"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."

"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."

"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

11%

Government

10%

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

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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.

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What needs improvement with GitLab?

One significant feature we lack is the configuration that enforces code reviews, which simplifies the development life cycle. Unfortunately, this is available only at a higher license level than we...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Travis CI?

I'm not too sure about the pricing of Travis or how the agreement works.

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What needs improvement with Travis CI?

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What is your primary use case for Travis CI?

Travis CI is mainly used to run integration tests as part of the deployment, which I do on Kubernetes. The Travis workflows are integrated with any changes in my code. It will have different jobs, ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 16% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

June 2025

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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

Easily sync your GitHub projects with Travis CI and you'll be testing your code in minutes. Travis CI for private repositories has plans for every size project. With Travis CI testing your open source project is 100% free.

Travis CI

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

Facebook, Heroku, Mozilla, Zendesk, twitter, Rails

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, Jenkins and others in Build Automation. Updated: June 2025.

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