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Contrast Security Protect vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 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

Contrast Security Protect
Ranking in Application Security Tools
31st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (9th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), 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 Protect is 0.8%, 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitLab2.1%
Contrast Security Protect0.8%
Other97.1%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.
I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Role-based workflows have transformed daily deployments and improve team collaboration
GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process. The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps. The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly. For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities. GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother. Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"This product is always evolving, and they listen to the customers."
"I like GitLab from the CI/CD perspective. It is much easier to set up CI/CD and then integrate with other tools."
"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."
"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."
"This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it is compatible with GitHub. The product's integration capabilities are sufficient for our small company of 35 people."
 

Cons

"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."
"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"I would like to see better integration with project management tools such as Jira."
"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."
"A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"The solution does not have many built-in functions or variables so scripting is required."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"I don't really like the new Kubernetes integration because it is pretty focused on the on-premise environment, but we're in a hybrid environment."
"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"GitLab is cheap."
"Regarding pricing, I would rate GitLab as moderately priced, maybe around a seven or eight out of ten. It could be more flexible for clients but generally offers good value."
"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 price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"The price is okay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise45
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.
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...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Protect
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Protect vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.