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CircleCI vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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

CircleCI
Ranking in Build Automation
14th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
5
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
85
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 July 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 15.0%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Unhelpful support, unclear billing, and has offers ability to track usage
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read and understand issues when emailing them. They reply to me with a totally different context about the problem. Just yesterday, my web applications failed to 'yarn build' after I downgraded the resource class from extr-large to large. I contacted support and got no reply. Billing is a mess. There is duplicate information in the bill downloaded from their website and when I asked for a consolidated bill, they just answered that they didn't have it. There is no transparency on how many billed minutes and credits I spent each day both on their website and the monthly bill which makes it difficult to understand when the monthly bill contains many refill item charges. It is difficult or impossible to track usage and burndown of my subscription and to gain total outstanding refill amounts on a daily basis. Their website doesn't provide sufficient information on credits allocated/calculated for my extra-large resource class.
Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"It's a stable product."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."
"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."
"A user friendly solution."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."
"GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments."
"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
 

Cons

"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"Billing is a mess."
"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."
"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
"GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly."
"Reporting could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."
"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."
"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"We are currently using the open-source version."
"GitLab is cheap."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CircleCI?
The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
Beware of skyrocketing bills as CircleCI does not provide transparency into how they charge refills. Their monthly billing statement is almost unreadable and their online dashboard doesn't provide ...
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup and environment. That costs us credits. Support engineers do not thoroughly read...
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?
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
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
Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
860,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.