GitHub vs GitLab: Winner!

Managing code-changes over time can be overwhelming. A Version Control System (VCS) is a software tool that helps you do that. It tracks every change you make to your files or code and lets you revert to any previous version if needed.

GitHub and GitLab are two of the most popular and widely used VCS cloud platforms in software development. They are both based on a distributed VCS system, Git. They both provide many similar features, such as version control, issue tracking, code review, and continuous integration.

But they also have some notable differences between them, especially in terms of CI/CD and DevSecOps capabilities. In this article, you’ll learn about some important differences between GitHub and GitLab.

GitHub is a Git-based cloud platform that lets you work on your code, share it with others, and manage code repositories. It is a very popular platform among developers worldwide, especially for open-source projects, and is great for learning, sharing, creating, and managing code. It's widely adopted and used by individuals as well as mega-enterprises.

With GitHub, you can:

• Track, raise, and report issues, request features, or ask questions about your code. You can also manage tasks, label issues, and comment on them.
• Suggest code changes to other developers. You can review, comment, and merge the changes into the main code.
• Develop websites and applications for your projects. You can use different languages to design your websites and host them for free on GitHub.
• Create and run automated CI/CD pipelines. You can use GitHub Marketplace to utilize pre-built templates for your create and run project’s CI/CD pipelines for DevOps. You can also use GitHub Actions to create your custom CI/CD pipelines.
• Use GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered code generator to complete your code, offer solutions, and write entire functions based on your input.

GitLab is a cloud service similar to GitHub, to work, manage, and collaborate while developing software. GitLab is a popular choice among developers worldwide, especially for DevSecOps projects. It offers tons of built-in DevOps and DevSecOps capabilities. Let’s take a moment and learn a bit about DevSecOps.

DevSecOps is a framework that integrates security into every stage of software development. It helps you detect and fix code vulnerabilities with automated DevOps pipelines. It makes security a continuous responsibility throughout the dev cycle. It also speeds up and improves software delivery by reducing risks from the early stages.

Like GitHub, GitLab also uses Git’s distributed model VCS as a base for its workflows and code management.

With GitLab, you can:

• Track and prioritize your issues, epics, and milestones using the issue board. You can use issue boards to plan, manage, and visualize workflows for your apps or software features.
• Propose code changes to other developers using merge requests. You can review, comment, and approve the changes using code quality and security tools.
• Create websites for your projects. You can use any static site generator to build your websites and host them for free on GitLab.
• Use built-in DevSecOps features for CI/CD. You can define and run secured automated CI/CD pipelines for your code workflows.
• Utilize GitLab’s Container Registry to develop, test, and deploy apps. You can create containerized apps in isolated environments and merge them with your project with automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Deploy your code using GitLab Auto DevOps, an automated DevOps pipeline. GitLab Auto DevOps can detect your programming language and create configurable predefined stages as templates for CI/CD DevOps pipelines for you to build, test, and deploy your code.

Since both GitHub and GitLab are Git-based, comparing the three would help you steer clear of any confusion. Let’s quickly compare Git vs GitHub vs GitLab:

Both GitHub and GitLab allow you to track code changes, manage repositories, and work together on code. However, GitHub and GitLab are not the same. They are also owned and run by different companies.

There are some notable differences in terms of many features and functionalities. These differences or features may affect your choice and preference based on your requirements.

Here’s a head-to-head comparison between GitHub vs GitLab:

#1 - GitHub vs. GitLab: Hosting

GitHub Hosting

• Cloud-Based Hosting (github.com):  You can store your projects on GitHub’s servers and access them through github.com. It’s fully managed by GitHub, easily scalable, and can be used for SaaS solutions with minimum infrastructure management.
• Self-hosted hosting (GitHub Enterprise): With GitHub Enterprise, you have the option of using self-hosted runners to execute your code workflows in the environment that you prefer. You can set up self-hosted runners for your code on physical machines, virtual machines, containers, or cloud services, depending on your needs.

GitLab Hosting

• Cloud-Based Hosting (gitlab.com):  You can store your projects on GitLab’s servers and access them through gitlab.com. The infrastructure is fully managed by GitLab and you don’t have to worry about setting up the servers manually.
• GitLab Self-Managed Hosting: With this service, you can store your projects on your own private servers or use GitLab’s infrastructure to run and manage your projects. You can access them through gitlab.com. Enterprises with their own needs or requirements generally use these services.

#2 - GitHub vs GitLab: Integrations

GitHub Integrations

GitHub has a large and diverse ecosystem of third-party integrations and extensions that you can use to add more features and functionalities to your software projects.

These integrations allow you to:

• Install various applications and services that work with GitHub.
• Create workflows for automation and orchestration of tasks such as testing, building, deploying, and more.
• Publish and manage packages of code that can be reused and shared.
• Collaborate on projects with common tools and software.
• Report issues and bugs, and track and manage projects.

Here are some note-worthy GitHub Integrations:

• BetterBugs: BetterBugs is a free Chrome extension for bug reporting and management that integrates seamlessly with GitHub. It lets you raise issues in a snap. BetterBugs automatically attaches DevTools details like console logs, network requests, system information, and much more to every bug report you create with the screen capturing or screen recording feature for efficient debugging sessions. Other than GitHub, you can also integrate and share your bug reports with popular platforms like Jira, Asana, Slack, Linear, and more within minutes.

• Jira: Jira is a popular project management platform. It lets you manage projects on GitHub and sync them with Jira to track issues, pull requests, and commits.
• Jenkins: With Jenkins, you can run CI/CD pipelines for your GitHub projects with Jenkins integration and trigger workflows based on GitHub events.
• Slack: Slack lets you collaborate and communicate with your team in a streamlined way. You can integrate GitHub with Slack to send notifications, share code snippets, and interact with GitHub data from your Slack channels.
• Visual Studio Code: Visual Studio Code seamlessly integrates with GitHub for code collaboration. You can use and manage GitHub features with VS Code, such as pull requests and issues, push commits, conduct code reviews, and so on.

Read More: Top 10 Bug Tracking Tools to Look in 2024

GitLab Integrations

GitLab lets you collaborate on projects with a unified ecosystem of in-built and external tools. Apart from most of the workflows similar to GitHub for managing repositories online, there are several integrations available for GitLab. Here are some of the top GitLab Integrations:

• Jenkins: You can run CI/CD pipelines for your GitLab projects with the Jenkins automation server. You can also manage your pipelines from GitLab using the GitLab plugin for Jenkins.
• Kubernetes: You can deploy your containerized applications to Kubernetes clusters with GitLab. You can also monitor and manage your clusters from GitLab using the GitLab Kubernetes integration.
• Datadog: With Datadog and GitLab integration, you can monitor your GitLab project performance, availability, and CI/CD issues to visualize and analyze your GitLab data.
• Microsoft Teams: You can collaborate with your team on GitLab and communicate with them on Teams to send notifications, share code snippets, and interact with GitLab data from Teams channels.

#3 - GitHub vs GitLab: CI/CD Capabilities

CI/CD stands for continuous integration and continuous deployment. It’s a development practice in software that lets you define rules code pipelines for automated integration, testing, and deployment of code changes. These code changes can be verified using automation, leading to faster delivery of production code, reliably.

GitHub CI/CD

With GitHub, you can:

• Integrate the CI/CD tools from GitHub Marketplace. It offers tons of pre-built CI/CD workflows to use for your projects to get up and running with your project’s DevOps requirements.
• Use GitHub Actions to create your own workflows for the automation and orchestration of project tasks and stages. GitHub Actions is GitHub’s offering to include custom CI/CD tools in your project.

GitLab CI/CD

With GitLab, you can:

• Utilize the built-in DevSecOps capabilities for CI/CD. It allows you to define secured and custom CI/CD pipelines for the automation and deployment of your projects.
• Store and manage containers of code that can be run and deployed using the GitLab Container Registry feature. It’s yet another built-in feature in GitLab for CI/CD. Code containers allow you to hold and run an app’s or a feature’s code and its dependencies in isolated environments. This enables you to develop, test, and deploy your code by first running it in closed environments and then pushing it to production using CI/CD pipelines.
• Use Auto DevOps to create and run your DevOps pipelines in your preferred language. Auto DevOps auto detects your programming language to create templates for the CI/CD pipeline and further streamline your CI/CD workflows. You can configure the templates to develop and test your apps.

#4 - GitHub vs GitLab: Pricing Plans

Both GitHub and GitLab have free and paid tiers. You can choose what suits best for you and your needs. Here’s an overview of pricing plans for GitHub vs GitLab:

GitHub Pricing Plans: Free, Team, and Enterprise.

• Free Plan: Lets you host open-source or private projects with unlimited repositories, automatic security and version updates, issues and projects, 2000 minutes/month for CI/CD action, GitHub Copilot access, and GitHub codespaces access. It's great for new and experienced developers.
• Team Plan: Apart from all the features from the free plan, you get advanced features like protected branches, more CI/CD minutes/month, code ownership, draft pull requests, and so on in the Team plan.
• Enterprise Plan: Along with all the features of Free and Team plans, you get a bunch of extra features such as enterprise-grade security, compliance, and support.

You can check the exact pricing from the GitHub Pricing Page.

GitLab Pricing Plans: Free, Premium, and Ultimate.

• Free Plan: You can use GitLab’s core features like version control, issue tracking, code review, and CI/CD.
• Premium Plan: In addition to the free plan features, you can access advanced features like code ownership, protected branches, merge request approvals, enterprise agile planning, and user and incident management.
• Ultimate Plan: Apart from all the features of the premium plan, you get additional and advanced features like security dashboards, vulnerability management, dependency scanning, portfolio management, and much more.

You can check the complete pricing from the GitLab Pricing Page.

Choosing between GitHub and GitLab is a decision that depends on various factors, and understanding the differences between these two popular version control platforms is crucial. Ultimately, the choice between GitHub and GitLab depends on your specific project requirements, team preferences, and organizational needs.