Contrast Security Assess vs GitLab comparison

Read 88 GitLab reviews

17,371 Views
2,953 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Contrast Security Assess and GitLab are both in the application security category. Contrast Security Assess seems to have the upper hand in dynamic security features while GitLab excels in DevOps integration.

Features: Contrast Security Assess provides real-time application security embedded within applications, significantly reducing false positives and offering immediate threat analysis. GitLab offers an integrated platform with built-in CI/CD pipelines, enhancing software development with strong collaboration tools and seamless workflow management.

Room for Improvement: Contrast Security Assess could enhance its user interface for better accessibility and provide more in-depth documentation. It may also benefit from improved application compatibility and expanded integration with third-party tools. GitLab could improve its initial setup complexity for new users, expand its feature-set beyond standard DevOps functions, and enhance the clarity of its documentation for advanced functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Contrast Security Assess allows for seamless integration with existing workflows and offers responsive support that aids in quick deployment. GitLab offers both self-hosted and cloud options with a straightforward installation process, backed by robust documentation and reliable support, though its initial setup can be complex compared to Contrast Security Assess.

Pricing and ROI: Contrast Security Assess generally has a higher pricing model with a focus on achieving ROI through robust security measures. GitLab offers a competitive pricing framework, emphasizing broader functionalities that lead to substantial ROI through improved development efficiency and lifecycle management.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab Report (Updated: December 2025).

Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab

Download the complete report

Helped 879,422 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:

Categories and Ranking

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

29th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Application Security Tools

12th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), 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 January 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 2.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	2.1%
Contrast Security Assess	1.1%
Other	96.8%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605099

Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications

The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of. Assess also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.

Read full review

Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it."

"The solution's service delivery model is fantastic."

"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."

"Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what; this is the best feature which is useful for all companies."

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

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

"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."

"GitLab helps me save time and provide financial benefits, as keeping track of the updated version and the changes is money and time-saving."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"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."

"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."

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

"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."

"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."

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

"The self-hosted version of GitLab is not very stable when under load. It slows down and requires restarts every few days."

"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"The solution is expensive."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

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

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

"This is an open-source solution."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."

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

"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?

We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

GitLab can be improved by being more responsive in the UI and offering better pricing for premium features, which would be useful for small startups. While GitLab's CI/CD is powerful, it is somewha...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 12% of the time

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 7% of the time

Seeker Interactive vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 7% of the time

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 6% of the time

Snyk vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

More Contrast Security Assess Competitors

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 48% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 7% of the time

SonarQube vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 3% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 3% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Product Reports

Contrast Security Assess

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Download GitLab product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Fuzzit

Overview

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

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

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

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

Contrast Security Assess vs. GitLab