CircleCI vs GitLab vs TeamCity comparison

Read 82 GitLab reviews

6,080 Views
4,974 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

TeamCity

Read 28 TeamCity reviews

2,185 Views
1,937 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

CircleCI

TeamCity

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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, Jenkins and others in Build Automation.

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

Build Automation

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Helped 849,686 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 May 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.1%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 15.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TeamCity is 7.6%, 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.

Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration

Gaurav Chandel

AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at Tata Consultancy

There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.

Build management system used to successfully create full request tests and run security scans

Omakoji Idakwoji

Software Engineer at Home Depot

I find the TeamCity backend easily accessible. Users can login to the Linux servers that TeamCity is installed on and perform operations. Also I find the ability to template solutions using the meta runner a good feature as well as the user management feature. There is a display that shows which user made recent changes to a branch on GitHub, including the time the changes were made and the particular agent that ran the job. This is also a very useful feature. The metrics and audit available for projects, pipelines and jobs come in handy when debugging.

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

"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."

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

"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."

"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."

"It's a stable product."

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

"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 valuable feature of GitLab is its convenience. I am able to trace back most of my changes up to a far distance in time and it helps me to analyze and see the older version of the code."

"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."

"GitLab is kind of an image of GitHub, so it gives us the flexibility to monitor our changes in the repos."

"The solution's most valuable features are pipelines."

"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."

"It speeds up our development, it's faster, safer, and more convenient."

"They incorporate new features every September, and they have introduced their own code editor and AI features."

More GitLab pros

"We would like to see better integration with other version controls, since we encountered difficulty when this we first attempted."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is its easy configuration. It also has multiple plugins that can be used especially for building .net applications."

"Using TeamCity and emailing everyone on fail is one way to emphasize the importance of testing code and showing management why taking the time to test actually does saves time from having to fix bugs on the other end."

"Good integration with IDE and JetBrains products."

"TeamCity is very useful due to the fact that it has a strong plug-in system."

"It is very easy to use, and its speed is impressive, allowing the code to be ready for production in seconds."

"The integration is a valuable feature."

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

More TeamCity pros

Cons

"Billing is a mess."

"The solution’s pricing could be better."

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

"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."

"GitLab's UI could be improved."

"GitLab should enhance its GitOps capability as they are currently using FluxCD, however, Argo CD is better and offers more features. GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."

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

"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."

"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."

"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."

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

"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."

More GitLab cons

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

"Integrating with certain technologies posed challenges related to time and required support from the respective technology teams to ensure smooth integration with TeamCity."

"Their online documentation is fairly extensive, but sometimes you can end up navigating in circles to find answers. I would like them (or partner with someone) to provide training classes to help newcomers get things up and running more quickly."

"If there was more documentation that was easier to locate, it would be helpful for users."

"The upgrade process could be smoother. Upgrading major versions can often cause some pain."

"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."

"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."

"We've called TeamCity tech support. Unfortunately, all their tech support is based in Europe, so we end up with such a big time crunch that I now need to have one person in the US."

More TeamCity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."

"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."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

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

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."

"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

"We are using the open-source version."

"The licensing is on an annual basis."

"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."

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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

20%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

24%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

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 of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.

What needs improvement with GitLab?

Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and ...

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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Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Build Automation

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TeamCity

Download TeamCity product report

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 is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.