CircleCI vs GitLab vs TeamCity comparison

Read 85 GitLab reviews

19,768 Views
4,547 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

TeamCity

Read 28 TeamCity reviews

1,959 Views
1,959 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

CircleCI

TeamCity

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CircleCI, GitLab, and TeamCity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab, Google, GitHub and others in Build Automation.

To learn more, read our detailed Build Automation Report (Updated: July 2025).

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Build Automation

July 2025

Helped 865,164 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 14.5%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TeamCity is 7.2%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

reviewer0972521

Chief Technology Officer at Kyberlife

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.

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

Rohit Kesharwani

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.

Impressive pipeline efficiency with helpful support and a fairly straightforward setup

Almoeeni Fazal

Python Django developer at Cielo WiGle Inc.

We use TeamCity for the CI/CD pipeline. It is used for deploying code from the desktop to the production environment. We push our code to GitHub, which then creates a pipeline to a server using AWS, deploying automatically without errors or conflicts in GitHub branches. We also use TeamCity's…

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."

"It's a stable product."

"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."

"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 solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

"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."

"GitLab is a solution for source code management, container registry, pipelines, testing, and deployment."

"It is scalable."

"The most valuable features of GitLab are ease of use and highly intuitive UI and performance."

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

"GitLab's best feature is Actions."

"The scalability is good."

"GitLab is scalable and works well with multiple environments."

More GitLab pros

"The flexibility of TeamCity allows it to fit in workflows that I have yet to imagine."

"TeamCity's GUI is nice."

"I have not yet implemented the remote build feature, but this will be a big plus. We want to be able to build legacy products on a build agent without developers needing to have obsolete tool sets installed on their local PC."

"Good integration with IDE and JetBrains products."

"One of the most beneficial features for us is the flexibility it offers in creating deployment steps tailored to different technologies."

"TeamCity is more structured and user-friendly than other vendors."

"TeamCity is a very user-friendly tool."

"The integration is a valuable feature."

More TeamCity pros

Cons

"Billing is a mess."

"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."

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."

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

"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."

"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."

"I used Spring Cloud config and to connect that to GitLab was so hard."

"It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful."

"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."

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

"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."

More GitLab cons

"If TeamCity could create more out of the box solutions to make it more user friendly and create more use cases, that would be ideal."

"I would suggest creating simple and advanced configurations. Advanced configurations will give more customizations like Jenkins does."

"REST API support lacks many features in customization of builds, jobs, and settings."

"I need some more graphical design."

"The integration between other solutions and TeamCity could be smoother."

"The UI for this solution could be improved. New users don't find it easy to navigate. The need some level of training to understand the ins and the outs."

"Last time I used it, dotnet compilation had to be done via PowerShell scripts. There was actually a lot that had to be scripted."

"I would like to see an improvement where TeamCity alerts us via email or another medium if there are discrepancies between the code in the staging environment and what has been deployed to production, such as missing updates."

More TeamCity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."

"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."

"We are currently using the open-source version."

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

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

"This is an open-source solution."

"Start with the free tier for a few build configs and see how it works for you, then according to your scale find the enterprise license which fits you the most."

"The licensing is on an annual basis."

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Comparison Review

it_user184734

Systems Administrator at Facebook

Jan 22, 2015

I generally find TeamCity a lot more intuitive than Jenkins.

Moving to TeamCity from Jenkins At work, we’re slowly migrating from Jenkins to TeamCity in the hope of ending some of our recurring problems with continuous integration. My use of Jenkins prior to this job has been almost strictly on a personal basis, although I pretty much only use Travis…

What do you like most about CircleCI?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 bi...

What needs improvement with CircleCI?

We've had occasional connectivity issues with cloud resources and build failure due to its own internal system setup ...

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 provi...

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 ...

What do you like most about TeamCity?

One of the most beneficial features for us is the flexibility it offers in creating deployment steps tailored to diff...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TeamCity?

Compared to new technologies, TeamCity is more expensive and is an older tool compared to tools like GitLab.

What needs improvement with TeamCity?

TeamCity's user interface could be improved; specifically, the tree structure on the homepage is not clear, making it...

GitHub Actions vs CircleCI

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Jenkins vs CircleCI

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Bamboo vs CircleCI

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 31% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

Harness vs TeamCity

Compared 13% of the time

Jenkins vs TeamCity

Compared 10% of the time

Tekton vs TeamCity

Compared 6% of the time

JRebel vs TeamCity

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download CircleCI product report

Build Automation

July 2025

Download GitLab product report

August 2025

Download TeamCity product report

TeamCity

July 2025

Also Known As

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Fuzzit

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Overview

CircleCI is a leading platform for automating continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), valued for its capability to manage software updates efficiently. With an easy-to-configure system using YAML files and robust Docker support, CircleCI streamlines backend updates, frontend developments, and mobile app testing across devices. Its parallelism feature and insightful dashboard reduce processing times and improve workflow visibility, respectively, enhancing team collaboration and productivity while maintaining high-quality outputs across development stages.

CircleCI

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.