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FOSSA vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

FOSSA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (12th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of FOSSA is 3.2%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 4.0%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitLab4.0%
FOSSA3.2%
Other92.8%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2588340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.
Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I found FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine to be accurate and that it was tuned appropriately to the settings that we were looking for. The policy engine is pretty straightforward... I find it to be very straightforward to make small modifications to, but it's very rare that we have to make modifications to it. It's easy to use. It's a four-category system that handles most cases pretty well."
"FOSSA provided us with contextualized, easily actionable intelligence that alerted us to compliance issues. I could tell FOSSA exactly what I cared about and they would tell me when something was out of policy. I don't want to hear from the compliance tool unless I have an issue that I need to deal with. That was what was great about FOSSA is that it was basically "Here's my policy and only send me an alert if there's something without a policy." I thought that it was really good at doing that."
"I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results."
"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."
"FOSSA suggests solutions for dependency mismatches."
"What I really need from FOSSA, and it does a really good job of this, is to flag me when there are particular open source licenses that cause me or our legal department concern. It points out where a particular issue is, where it comes from, and the chain that brought it in, which is the most important part to me."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."
"The support team has just been amazing, and it helps us to have a great support team from FOSSA. They are there to triage and answer all our questions which come up by using their product."
"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."
"GitLab offers a good interface for doing code reviews between two colleagues."
"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."
"GitLab has positively impacted my organization by being faster than other platforms and providing the best user interface and features."
"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."
"The most valuable functionality of GitLab, for me, is the DevOps. Besides the normal source control based on Git, I find the Auto DevOps features most important in the solution."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
 

Cons

"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big. This is doable for them. They are still in the stages of trying to figure this out since we are one of their biggest companies that they support."
"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."
"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."
"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."
"One thing that can sometimes be difficult with FOSSA is understanding all that it can do. One of the ways that I've been able to unlock some of those more advanced features is through conversations with the absolutely awesome customer success team at FOSSA, but it has been a little bit difficult to find some of that information separately on my own through FAQs and other information channels that FOSSA has. The improvement is less about the product itself and more about empowering FOSSA customers to know and understand how to unlock its full potential."
"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."
"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"We are having a few problems integrating with Jira at the moment, which is something that our IT department is investigating."
"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."
"The solution should be more cloud-native and have more cloud-native capabilities and features."
"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."
"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"It could have more security integrations and the ability to check the vulnerability of the code. I don't think it is a responsibility of Gitlab, but it would be nice to have more options to integrate with."
"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"This is an open-source solution."
"We are using the open-source version."
"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."
"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."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
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 SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
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 FOSSA vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.