Chef vs GitLab comparison

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Chef

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Chef and GitLab are competing in software development and infrastructure automation. GitLab may have an edge with its comprehensive DevOps tool suite that enhances the entire software development cycle.

Features: Chef is valued for automation capabilities, scalability, and support for multiple environments, making it fit for infrastructure management. GitLab's integrated platform excels in source code management, CI/CD, and collaborative development, offering a comprehensive toolset for efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Chef could enhance its user interface for easier navigation and develop more intuitive rollback processes. Additionally, providing more integrations with third-party services could improve its usability. GitLab could focus on optimizing performance for large-scale repositories and invest in better customization options for different workflows. Expanding native integration with cloud services would strengthen its capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab's deployment is straightforward with extensive documentation and a supportive community, easing setup challenges. Chef also provides detailed documentation but requires complex configurations due to its focus on infrastructure. Both offer effective support channels, but GitLab's unified platform aids those seeking an integrated approach.

Pricing and ROI: Prices for Chef vary based on automation scale, often yielding high ROI by optimizing infrastructure management. GitLab's pricing reflects its extensive features and offers significant ROI by increasing development efficiency. Its integrated offerings could offer long-term value for organizations seeking an all-encompassing solution.

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

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Chef vs. GitLab

July 2025

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

8.1

Chef improved deployment time, reduced human error, enhanced scalability, optimized resource use, and strengthened compliance and security management.

Sentiment score

7.0

GitLab significantly boosts ROI by reducing deployment time, enhancing DevOps, automating processes, and supporting cost-effective, secure software development.

No quotes available

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Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate.

reviewer2603940

IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.

Andrea PICCININI

IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.1

Customers commend Chef for its responsive support, active community, comprehensive documentation, and efficient issue resolution despite occasional delays.

Sentiment score

6.7

GitLab's customer service is generally positive, though some experience delays despite relying on stable resources and documentation.

No quotes available

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We have rarely needed to escalate issues to technical support since GitLab usually runs seamlessly.

Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch.

reviewer2603940

IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I have interacted with architects for some advice during the implementation, and they were prompt in their response.

Mikhael Ibrahim

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.8

Chef is highly scalable, efficiently managing infrastructures of all sizes and accommodating numerous clients based on server capacity.

Sentiment score

7.3

GitLab is praised for its scalable, container-based architecture, adaptable for enterprises, with both vertical and horizontal scaling capabilities.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.

Sarfaraz Khan

Senior Application Developer at IBM

For scaling, other deployment options from GitLab's side need to be adopted.

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

We're transitioning to OpenShift for future scalability with increased user numbers.

Mikhael Ibrahim

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

Users rate Chef's stability 8-9/10, comparing it favorably to competitors like Ansible, and find it stable for various use cases.

Sentiment score

8.2

GitLab is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues and availability above 99%, though updates may disrupt self-hosted versions.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

I have not encountered any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.

Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

The updates are frequent and demanding, happening at least once a week due to security reasons.

Andrew Schetinin

Chief Technology Officer at Acclym

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Room For Improvement

Chef needs better support, pricing, role management, flexibility, documentation, integration, and improved automation to compete with Ansible.

GitLab needs better integration, user-friendly interfaces, improved documentation, enhanced security, stability, pricing, and advanced CI/CD and AI features.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

It is essential to conduct proper testing, such as unit tests and code coverage, within the SDLC pipelines.

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.

reviewer2603940

IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

GitLab is a great tool for developers, it lacks project planner features.

Raveen Aggarwal

It Architect at UBS Financial

Setup Cost

Chef offers subscription plans with valuable automation features, but enterprise pricing is high and requires contacting sales for quotes.

GitLab provides open-source and paid plans catering to various needs, with pricing comparable to market competitors.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

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

Andrew Schetinin

Chief Technology Officer at Acclym

The price is high, and it limits user accessibility.

Andrea PICCININI

IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione

Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.

Sarfaraz Khan

Senior Application Developer at IBM

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Valuable Features

Chef offers compliance, easy configuration management, and automation for IT infrastructure, integrating with CI processes and supporting multiple clouds.

GitLab excels with CI/CD, seamless branch merging, robust security, and efficient collaboration, making it ideal for DevOps processes.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Chef report

It helped me personally and my team to save time and money.

Sriya Sainath

Junior Associate at McKinsey

The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.

Andrea PICCININI

IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the GitLab report

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Categories and Ranking

Chef

Ranking in Build Automation

20th

Ranking in Release Automation

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (18th)

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Ranking in Release Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (11th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), 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 Chef is 0.6%, down from 0.7% 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

Aaron P

DevOps Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation

In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

Read full review

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab 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

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865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Retailer

University

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 Chef?

Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

What needs improvement with Chef?

Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.

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

Download Chef product report

Chef

August 2025

Download GitLab product report

August 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Fuzzit

Overview

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

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

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

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