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GNU Make vs GitLab comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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

GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (8th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
GNU Make
Ranking in Build Automation
19th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 6.1%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GNU Make is 1.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab6.1%
GNU Make1.7%
Other92.2%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JC
Software Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Enhances productivity with efficient dependency handling and a straightforward setup
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for tasks like compiling C++ code. In the industry, AI developers, for example, use GNU Make in their work…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."
"Their CI/CD engine is very mature. It's very comprehensive and flexible, and compared to other projects, I believe that GitLab is number one right now from that perspective."
"GitLab is a wholly complete solution and it is for this reason that I can recommend it to other users."
"CI/CD is valuable for me."
"The scalability is good."
"The solution is similar to all the repository tools or the work tools on the market, and I like it and find it quite easy to use."
"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."
"Previously we used Team Foundation Server, but GitLab is better for local cloud deployment."
"I have not encountered any scalability issues with GNU Make. It is as scalable as the project's structure is, and then some."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"Make tool, originally made for the GNU operating system, helps in the generation of executable from the main program source files."
"Full-featured syntax allows building strategies as simple or as complex as one wishes, and declarative approach fits the task really well. Wide adoption also means that everybody knows what GNU Make is and how to use it."
"Makefiles are extremely easy to work with using any preferred editor. GNU Make can be run directly from the terminal, not requiring any time wasted on clicking."
"I think this product has all you need."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"GNU make is a build automation utility for running builds on various Linux flavored platforms."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by having better integration."
"Based on what I know so far, its integration with Kubernetes is not so good. We have to develop many things to make it work. We have to acquire third-party components to work with Kubernetes."
"The documentation is confusing."
"Merge conflicts and repository maintenance could improve. If there is someone new to the system they would not know if there is a conflict."
"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."
"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."
"The self-hosted version of GitLab is not very stable when under load. It slows down and requires restarts every few days."
"In my experience, GitLab is stable; however, sometimes it takes much time to start the runner and gets stuck in a pending situation, possibly due to traffic issues."
"GNU Make requires using the Tab symbol as the first symbol of command line for execution. In some text editors this can be problematic, as they automatically insert spaces instead of tabs."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"GNU make is a bad candidate for builds that require incremental builds often, as it does not support this feature."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output. A wrapper named colormake exists to work around this, but native (opt-in) support would be welcome."
"Vanilla GNU Make does not support any kind of colored output."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"The solution's pricing is acceptable."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."
"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."
"GNU Make is free and open source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The setup cost for GitLab is minimal since the team has its own minimal resource balancing. The costing falls into an intermediate stage and is impactful across all results within the team. It allo...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
There are many improvements that GitLab can implement, such as addressing the issue of caching. Currently, when I have multiple tasks to merge or attempt multiple merges, the CI/CD and overall GitL...
What is your primary use case for GitLab?
My main use case for GitLab is as a version control system that we are using. Currently, I am working on an end-to-end AI pipeline, and I have deployed my whole code using GitLab so that all things...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GNU Make?
GNU Make is a free solution that comes with Linux, which positively impacts operational costs by eliminating licensing fees.
What needs improvement with GNU Make?
I am not familiar enough with it to suggest any specific new features or areas for improvement. It occupies its niche well.
What is your primary use case for GNU Make?
GNU Make is used as a build system tool. Most people don't use GNU Make directly but utilize other systems like CMake to generate Make files, which are then run by GNU Make. This is common for task...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about GNU Make vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.