GitHub vs GitLab: Which is the Best Choice in 2025?
Unfortunately, like most things in life, there’s no clear-cut “best choice for everyone” here. It depends on your team, larger organization, goals, and unique use cases. GitLab itself is open source software, and the self-hosted version is free for anyone to use. GitHub Actions automations make CI/CD possible without third-party tools, but you won’t have the same oversight level. But while you have options, they’re a lot more limited than if you go with GitHub. GitHub currently has 374 free apps in its marketplace, with many paid options to boot.
On the other hand, when we talk about GitHub vs GitLab, GitLab emerges as a relatively newer contender, experiencing rapid ascent in popularity. Its niche centers on DevOps, offering a suite of functionalities tailored to simplify and automate the software development process. Notably in GitHub vs GitLab, GitLab provides a free self-hosted variant, particularly appealing to businesses or organizations desiring heightened control over their infrastructure. These platforms offer features like access control, code encryption, and audit logs. However, GitLab’s self-hosting option might be a deciding factor for some companies seeking maximum control over their data security. Both GitLab and GitHub are powerful tools that cater to different needs.
GitHub vs GitLab 2025: Which One to Choose?
- While working on a project, developers may use GitHub to host their repositories online and interact with others on their teams.
- This gives you the conversational flow of chat combined with the power of Copilot’s code generation capabilities.
- GitLab and GitHub are platforms designed to streamline software development using Git, the open-source software for distributed version control.
- One of the main reasons for using BitBucket is the integrations with Jira, Confluence, Trello, and other Atlassian products.
In this article, we’ll explore these differences in depth, weighing the pros and cons to help you determine which platform aligns best with your team’s needs. In software development, the choice of tools is paramount to delivering high-quality software. Git forms the foundational backbone of version control, while GitHub and GitLab build upon its capabilities, offering a comprehensive ecosystem for developers. Though distinct, these tools work in harmony to streamline the development process. In contrast, GitLab was introduced in 2011 by Ukrainian engineers Valery Sizov and Dmitriy Zaporozhets. Targeted initially at larger development teams, it provided a more comprehensive suite of tools, including built-in GitHub vs GitLab CI/CD tools for streamlined testing and deployment.
Distributed vs non-distributed version control systems
Both GitLab and GitHub provide centralized, web-based platforms for managing Git repositories. They facilitate code collaboration, issue tracking, and, increasingly, the automation of software builds, testing, and deployment through CI/CD pipelines. GitHub, founded in 2008, has become synonymous with code hosting and collaboration. It boasts a massive user base and is widely adopted by open-source and private project teams alike. GitHub provides a user-friendly interface, powerful integration options, and a variety of collaboration tools.
Our expert provides a rundown of their respective features to help you decide which one best meets your needs. The main advantage of using third parties is the flexibility and amount of choice you’ll have between which programs to use for tasks such as CI/CD and DevOps. GitLab Ultimate includes everything from the Premium tier, allowing organizations to access more features to enhance security, compliance, and portfolio and value stream management. GitLab’s free tier offers essential features for individual users, including 400 compute minutes per month and five users per top-level group.
GitLab vs GitHub: Similarities
For anyone getting into coding I highly recommend learning to use Git as it is used by teams worldwide. If you didn’t have remote repos it would be extremely inconvenient working on a single project as a team. A remote repository is a version of your project that is hosted remotely, so not on your own computer but on the internet or a network. Instead you can revert to the previous working commit (version) deploy that and debug the issue locally without your service having too much downtime. Every time you’re ready to save your changes on a branch you “commit” those changes. I can push the branch up at any time without impacting the main branch, and this is recommended so that I have a backup of my work.
Some conclude that this makes GitLab the more security-minded Git platform, but GitHub also supports the same workflow. One of the crucial things that makes this happen is the automated testing tool that automatically scans code for potential security risks. Working only within GitLab, your development team can focus on pushing minor updates live multiple times per day, rather than batching them into big releases.
But you can also request and give access to other developers manually—over a LAN, for example. Only with Git do you have the freedom to work on various versions at once. It’s a must-have for any team that wants to do feature-based development. Let’s dive into GitLab and GitHub’s differences, their benefits and disadvantages, and which you should choose. Check out this blog post from the VS team on https://traderoom.info/gitlab-vs-github/ what works today and what’s coming shortly. The best way to keep up with the latest and greatest in AI coding is to follow us on X, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.
You can get the same result—the feature—but you need to jump through some extra hoops to get there. We’ll cover this difference in more detail later, as we pinpoint where the services differ. Next, let’s look at some more specific similarities beyond the surface level of the name and homepage. No, the two online services are offered by completely different companies. GitLab Inc. is a privately owned, fully remote company with 1,303 staff members.
On the contrary, GitHub excels in open-source development with a vast community and user-friendly interface. So, to choose the most suitable platform, consider your team size, budget, project type, and desired functionalities. If you prioritize a complete DevOps platform and control over data, choose GitLab. On the other hand, if you value open-source collaboration and a user-friendly interface, GitHub might be a better option. Still, always hire GitHub developers who are well-aware of all the components of this tool.
This underpins their core functionality of tracing code alterations within repositories. For mid-sized or enterprise-level needs, both platforms provide paid tiers that unlock additional features and support. Developers in 2025 expect extensive control over their workflows, from code creation to production deployment. GitHub and GitLab each provide flexible automation and customization features.
CI/CD is a critical component of modern DevOps workflows, automating build, test, and deployment processes. While both platforms support these pipelines, they take different approaches. GitLab started as an open-source project in 2011 and has grown into a comprehensive DevOps platform. So, if you need a comprehensive, secure, and customizable DevOps platform with advanced features for large-scale projects, GitLab is an excellent choice. Both GitLab and GitHub are powerful tools for version control and collaboration.
In conclusion, while GitHub and GitLab difference may seem subtle at first glance, they offer different experiences depending on your needs. One of the biggest differences between GitHub and GitLab is their communities. GitHub has the largest and most active community, especially for open-source projects. Developers can easily share code and contribute to a vast range of public repositories. This makes GitHub vs GitLab reddit discussions very common, with many developers asking for advice on which platform offers the best experience for open-source collaboration.
