GitHub Actions vs GitLab comparison

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GitHub Actions

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GitLab and GitHub Actions are both prominent platforms in software development automation. GitLab seems to have the upper hand when it comes to deep integration and control for teams, while GitHub Actions shines in seamless integration and adaptability.

Features: GitLab provides robust CI/CD pipeline capabilities, comprehensive DevOps tools, and effective code review features. GitHub Actions excels in its automation capabilities and seamless integration within the GitHub ecosystem, which allows for diverse workflow automation.

Room for Improvement: GitLab could improve its integration with third-party tools, documentation, and advanced project management features. GitHub Actions could enhance its debugging capabilities, integration options, and dashboard usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab supports both on-premises and cloud deployments, providing robustness but facing criticism for slow technical support. GitHub Actions benefits from seamless cloud deployment and integration with GitHub but relies on community support.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers a tiered pricing model, expensive for smaller teams but lucrative through deep integration. GitHub Actions is open source and cost-effective for individuals, with additional costs for enterprise needs, both showing strong ROI potential.

To learn more, read our detailed GitHub Actions vs. GitLab Report (Updated: September 2025).

GitHub Actions vs. GitLab

September 2025

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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

GitHub Actions

Ranking in Build Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (3rd), DevSecOps (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitHub Actions is 10.0%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 12.2%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	12.2%
GitHub Actions	10.0%
Other	77.8%

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Integration with various environments and cloud providers enhances automation

I use GitHub Actions for CI/CD pipelines. I automate infrastructure, deployment, and all processes. Most companies use CI/CD pipelines, and GitHub Actions is one of the tools available for this purpose The most valuable feature of GitHub Actions is that it is completely free. It can be integrated…

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

"It is a very stable solution as we have not faced any issues."

"I find the automation feature of GitHub Actions most valuable for our building processes. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, so there's no extra configuration needed, making the building process easy and efficient. GitHub Actions handles scalability well, automatically managing execution infrastructure without requiring additional configurations. We haven't yet explored GitHub Actions' support for AI projects, as we haven't used its AI capabilities."

"I am familiar with the entire life cycle of the product."

"It improves efficiency as it involves no downtime and is managed by GitHub."

"GitHub Actions can be easily configured, especially for environment variables and secrets. The UI is understandable and user-friendly for setting up CI/CD pipelines. I prefer tools like GitLab, where the pipeline starts quickly and is accessible near the commits for easy access. However, many CI/CD tools are interchangeable due to similar features of GitHub Actions and other similar tools."

"GitHub Actions is a beautiful tool that integrates smoothly with all major tools, reducing CI/CD work by 30% to 40%."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a good product that offers stability and performance."

"The solution has saved us approximately 20% in terms of efficiency and productivity."

More GitHub Actions pros

"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."

"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."

"The most important features of GitLab for us are issue management and all the CI/CD tools. Another aspect that I love about GitLab is the UI."

"As a developer, this solution is useful as a repository holder because most of the POC projects that we have are on GitLab."

"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."

"It scales well."

"It is scalable."

"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."

More GitLab pros

Cons

"The primary area for improvement I see is in artifact management, especially for saving screenshots or videos from failed tests or data-driven actions. Currently, the configuration for saving these artifacts is complex."

"Sometimes it is quite complex to commit code from our local system to the GitHub repository; creating a folder in GitHub can be tedious."

"The minor drawback of GitHub Actions is the management of the dashboard and pipeline runs, which needs improvement. The dashboard for running pipelines could be better."

"GitHub Actions lacks a feature for automating the build process for mobile applications."

"The solution's integration capabilities and UI are areas of concern where improvement is required to make the product more user-friendly."

"Improvements could be made in terms of time-saving capabilities and resolving potential complexities in centralized workflows."

"We can leverage this database tool to manage everything within our environment and data burners, allowing for customization and execution. An additional advantage is the capability to modify aspects like file size, making processes more efficient and faster across the pipelines. Regarding improvements or implementations, I believe there should be enhancements made to the deployment tool. It should be integrated as part of the solution. Infrastructure-wise, we already have tools like GitHub and RobSpot, and data enables us to automate various processes, which is quite beneficial. As for further enhancements, I'm uncertain. I've shared everything I know. However, if there's something specific you'd like to see in future releases, a feature that may not exist yet but would be desirable, I can't provide any input on that matter."

"The main improvement would be to add support for more programming languages and frameworks."

More GitHub Actions cons

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

"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."

"Even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still."

"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."

"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."

"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."

"The solution should again offer an on-premises deployment option."

"I've noticed an area for improvement in GitLab, particularly needing to go through many steps to push the code to the repository. Resolving that issue would make the product better. My team quickly fixed it by writing a small script, then double-clicking or enabling the script to take care of the issue. However, that quick fix was from my team and not the GitLab team, so in the next release, if an automatic deployment feature would be available in GitLab, then that would be good because, in Visual Studio, you can do that with just one click of a button."

More GitLab cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's low-priced. Not high, but definitely low."

"Price-wise, GitHub Actions is okay. If I want to use the product's advanced features, then I need to pay the licensing charges for the solution."

"The product is slightly more expensive than some alternatives."

"For our basic usage, we didn't have to pay."

"The tool's price is okay and reasonable."

"The cost for GitHub Actions may be around $45 dollars per user."

"Regarding cost, as an enterprise, we negotiate our license and expenses, so I can't provide a specific rating for that."

"It is free and open platform, so I would rate it 1 out of 10."

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."

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

"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."

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

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

"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."

"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	42

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about GitHub Actions?

I have optimized job execution time by running test scripts in parallel and creating multiple pipelines; we've significantly reduced execution times. What could take 50 minutes can be cut down to j...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Actions?

I would rate pricing a seven, which leans toward the expensive side. However, there is still value for money, and that's why we continue using it.

What needs improvement with GitHub Actions?

Frankly, I cannot imagine something that could be improved in GitHub Actions; there's a lot of capabilities, and the feature set is more advanced than we use. The pricing is high for the advanced s...

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 needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient. Security-wise, we have security features enabled in GitLab fo...

Harness vs GitHub Actions

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download GitHub Actions product report

GitHub Actions

October 2025

Download GitLab product report

October 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Fuzzit

Overview

GitHub Actions streamlines CI/CD processes with an intuitive YAML workflow and robust automation, enhancing efficiency and integration with third-party tools and cloud providers.

GitHub Actions automates development pipelines, supports scalable public and private runners, and manages secure secrets. This tool integrates seamlessly with platforms like AWS, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, and Databricks. It enhances DevOps workflows with reliable task automation. Users note areas for UI and deployment tool improvements, artifact management simplification, and additional programming language support. Debugging complexity and hosting agent transitions pose challenges, along with integration enhancements for tools like OneDrive.

What are GitHub Actions' key features?

YAML Workflow Creation: Simplifies configuration with intuitive YAML.
CI/CD Integration: Provides seamless integration within DevOps pipelines.
Automation Capabilities: Automates tasks with minimal manual intervention.
Third-Party Tool Compatibility: Works well with diverse tools and platforms.
Secure Secrets Management: Protects sensitive information effectively.

What benefits do users find in GitHub Actions?

Enhanced Performance: Boosts task execution speed and reliability.
Scalability: Supports growth with flexible runner options.
Improved Release Cycles: Ensures consistent updates and deployments.
Workflow Efficiency: Reduces manual tasks, increasing operational efficiency.

Companies in tech and software development frequently utilize GitHub Actions for integrating, deploying, and versioning projects. It is often employed for deploying applications to cloud environments like AWS and Kubernetes, managing extensive CI/CD workflows, and automating test and security operations, thereby streamlining production cycles across industries.

GitHub

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

Information Not Available

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