GitLab vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

GitLab and VMware are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while VMware is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5. GitLab holds a 15.0% mindshare in BA, compared to VMware’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 85 GitLab reviews

5,016 Views
4,048 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 22 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

312 Views
219 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GitLab

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

GitLab and VMware Tanzu Platform compete in the cloud and development tools space. GitLab appears to hold an advantage in repository and CI/CD pipeline management, whereas VMware Tanzu excels in Kubernetes and VMware integration.

Features: GitLab offers powerful repository tools, CI/CD pipeline, and integration capabilities, allowing for effective branch management and code reviews. VMware Tanzu Platform excels in Kubernetes cluster management and integrates seamlessly with VMware infrastructure, enhancing microservices and container orchestration with strong integration across virtualization, networking, and storage components.

Room for Improvement: GitLab struggles with integration beyond Kubernetes, lacking compatibility with platforms such as AWS, ETS, and Jira. Improvements are also needed in documentation and reporting features. VMware Tanzu needs better customization, visibility, and integration with non-VMware products, as well as reduced costs and enhanced disaster recovery options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab supports deployments across public, private, and hybrid clouds, benefiting from a large user community despite less responsive direct support without paid tiers. VMware Tanzu supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, with support experience influenced by knowledge of the VMware ecosystem and licensing terms. Both products emphasize the need for in-house expertise for effective management.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers a free version and paid licenses, proving cost-effective for small teams but expensive for some organizations. Its automation enhances ROI. VMware Tanzu's pricing is higher, fitting larger enterprises comfortably within VMware's ecosystem, and is known for enterprise-grade integration and scalability at a higher premium.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Build Automation

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)

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 VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.0%, down from 1.0% 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.

Read full review

DarshanChaudhari

Solutions Architect Hybrid Cloud Practice US/Europe at Tech Mahindra Limited

Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling

I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

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 scalability is good."

"The most valuable functionality of GitLab, for me, is the DevOps. Besides the normal source control based on Git, I find the Auto DevOps features most important in the solution."

"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."

"If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines."

"The best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish."

"We use GitLab in the new project for CI/CD, integration, and deployment."

"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."

"The solution's service delivery model is fantastic."

More GitLab pros

"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."

"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."

"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."

"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."

"The documentation is confusing."

"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."

"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."

"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."

More GitLab cons

"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."

"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."

"The infrastructure is quite challenging."

"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."

"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."

"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."

"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."

"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

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

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

"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

12%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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 and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

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

More GitLab Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 16% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

June 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

June 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

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

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

VMware

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

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

June 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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