AWS CodeBuild vs GitLab comparison

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AWS CodeBuild

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GitLab and AWS CodeBuild are strong competitors in the CI/CD and source code management field. GitLab seems to have the upper hand with a comprehensive feature set that caters to larger enterprises demanding seamless pipeline management and versatile code reviews, while AWS CodeBuild is favored for its simple integration within the AWS ecosystem, offering cost-effective serverless build solutions.

Features: GitLab offers seamless CI/CD pipeline management, robust code review, and extensive repository management capabilities, which are well-suited for teams requiring structured control and peer code scrutiny. AWS CodeBuild, on the other hand, excels in its integration with AWS services, providing a scalable, serverless building environment and effective platform support for varied coding languages and builds.

Room for Improvement: GitLab needs to enhance its AWS integration to compete with other cloud services, improve third-party integration, and expand reporting capabilities to support project management. AWS CodeBuild users highlight the need for improved documentation, easier troubleshooting, and enhanced UI and workflow management to address complexity and environmental setups.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab is flexible, offering both on-premises and cloud deployment, supported by a strong open-source community, though some users feel limited support without a paid plan. AWS CodeBuild provides ease of deployment for companies using AWS, benefiting from AWS's broad support infrastructure but relying on community and internal knowledge for problem-solving.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab has various pricing tiers that cater to different business sizes and needs, but its higher cost tiers can be challenging for smaller teams. In contrast, AWS CodeBuild's pricing based on compute resources is considered cost-effective, particularly for serverless operations. Both platforms deliver a strong ROI by streamlining automation and reducing deployment times, with GitLab's full feature set often justifying its price for enterprises, while AWS CodeBuild provides a more budget-friendly solution for those within the AWS environment.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS CodeBuild vs. GitLab Report (Updated: July 2025).

AWS CodeBuild vs. GitLab

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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

AWS CodeBuild

Ranking in Build Automation

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of AWS CodeBuild is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 14.5%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre

DevOps Engineer at Paydoh

Integration with diverse environments boosts productivity and automation

AWS CodeBuild's support for a wide range of programming languages and build environments benefits development teams significantly in terms of productivity and ease of use. There are extensive libraries of code structures available, making it a universal pipeline. All programming languages I have worked with are supported in AWS CodeBuild, eliminating the need for alternative deployment services. The service supports iOS builds, Kotlin, Java, NodeJS, and ReactJS. AWS has made it accessible to all languages, allowing developers to simply open the console and trigger builds. AWS manages all the background server operations for building or deploying code. For standard builds such as ReactJS or Java, a Linux or Ubuntu server suffices. AWS provides its own operating system for these purposes. For builds requiring physical servers, such as Apple macOS server, AWS rents Mac minis specifically for iOS and SwiftUI builds. While this incurs higher charges, it demonstrates AWS's commitment to providing comprehensive solutions for all use cases.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the main features I value in CodeBuild compared to previous experiences, like using Jenkins, is its ability to handle tasks automatically with AWS, requiring only proper setup of the check file."

"AWS CodeBuild reduces wait time and optimizes workflows."

"The integration is a good feature."

"The tool is used to build and test code. I find its biggest advantages are elasticity and reliability. We can easily assign as many computing resources as needed to build our code, which is much simpler than traditional methods that require server upgrades. It's a serverless tool, so it's very flexible and elastic."

"A valuable feature is the support for third-party repositories such as Bitbucket, GitLab, or GitHub."

"The most important thing is that it's self-contained in an AWS account, and it's all linked to the customer's AWS account."

"It works seamlessly with AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR)."

"CodeBuild supports various platforms and coding."

More AWS CodeBuild pros

"GitLab's best features are continuous integration and fast deployment."

"GitLab is being used as a repository for our codebase and it is a one stop DevOps tool we use in our team."

"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."

"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."

"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."

"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."

"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature of GitLab is the ability to upload scripts and make changes when needed and then reupload them. Additionally, the solution is user-friendly."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"While working on building images for multiple applications within a single script, I encountered an issue where looping functionality was not supported as expected."

"There is no persistent storage or preservation of workspace between the builds."

"The deployment fails sometimes."

"We had integration issues with a tool called Octopus Deploy while using CodeBuild. AWS support helped us resolve it, however, it could be better."

"Multiple clients have faced issues with pricing. After migrating from Azure to EC2, they were unexpectedly charged 100,000 rupees because the pricing details were not clearly visible."

"For improvement, I'd suggest more build instance-type options. There's a big jump from 15 gigabytes of RAM to 150, and I'd like something in between as the larger option is too expensive for our needs."

"The front-end interface and the management are somewhat challenging, and there's a lot of space for improvement."

"Notifications could be added, or SNS integration could be included so that notifications can be received on every build, whether the build fails or succeeds."

More AWS CodeBuild cons

"It is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."

"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."

"The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required."

"The solution could be faster."

"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."

"In the next release, I would like to see GitLab expand its integration capabilities to include platforms like DigitalOcean, which developers widely use for cloud infrastructure. Enhancing CI/CD automation features specifically tailored for DigitalOcean would be beneficial."

"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."

"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."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS CodeBuild is free. We only pay for our code's compute resources during the build process. For example, if our code takes ten minutes to build, we only pay for those ten minutes of computing time. CodeDeploy and CodePipeline are free because they're serverless and don't require computing resources. CodeCommit has minimal costs for storing code."

"Despite the cost, it is worth the investment."

"We pay a monthly licensing fee."

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

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"This is an open-source solution."

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

"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 an open-source solution."

"As I work in a vast enterprise, I'm unsure about the licensing cost for GitLab. It's the management team that takes care of that."

"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS CodeBuild?

It works seamlessly with AWS Elastic Container Registry (ECR).

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS CodeBuild?

The cost structure is affordable for most builds except macOS servers. Standard builds can utilize AWS EC2 servers for background operations. However, macOS or iOS builds require physical servers m...

What needs improvement with AWS CodeBuild?

The servers used for macOS and iOS builds are limited in availability, operating only in US East 1 and East 2, and US West 1 and West 2. This geographical limitation causes latency issues and exten...

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

What needs improvement with GitLab?

Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.

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Product Reports

AWS CodeBuild

Download AWS CodeBuild product report

Download GitLab product report

Also Known As

CodeBuild

Fuzzit

Overview

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy. With CodeBuild, you don’t need to provision, manage, and scale your own build servers. CodeBuild scales continuously and processes multiple builds concurrently, so your builds are not left waiting in a queue. You can get started quickly by using prepackaged build environments, or you can create custom build environments that use your own build tools. With CodeBuild, you are charged by the minute for the compute resources you use.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

GitLab offers a secure and user-friendly platform for CI/CD pipeline management, code repository control, and collaboration, enhancing development speed and efficiency. It facilitates automation with extensive customization and tool integration, ideal for DevOps processes.

GitLab supports source code management, version control, and collaborative development. It's frequently used in CI/CD processes to automate builds and deployments while integrating DevOps practices. GitLab allows companies to manage repositories, automate pipelines, conduct code reviews, and maintain development lifecycles. The platform supports infrastructure and configuration management, enabling efficient code collaboration, deployment automation, and comprehensive repository handling. Many organizations commit and deploy developed code using GitLab's capabilities.

What are GitLab's most valuable features?

CI/CD Pipeline Management: Streamlines development through automated testing and deployment.
User-Friendly Interface: Ensures ease of collaboration and task automation.
Code Merging and Branching: Facilitates smooth code integration and version control.
Security Platform: Provides strong security features for safe development.
Tool Integration: Enhances functionality with diverse tool integration.

What benefits should users evaluate?

Development Speed: Accelerates processes through automation.
Collaboration Ease: Simplifies team interactions and workflow.
Customization Options: Offers extensive personalization for specific needs.
Comprehensive Documentation: Provides detailed guidance for users.
Secure Platform: Maintains integrity with robust security features.

In specific industries, GitLab serves as a backbone for source code management and CI/CD implementation. Companies leverage its capabilities for infrastructure management and deployment automation, thus streamlining project delivery timelines. Its ability to handle configuration management and code repositories effectively aids in maintaining development lifecycles, making it a preferred choice for organizations committed to enhancing their DevOps practices.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

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

AWS CodeBuild vs. GitLab