No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

GNU Make vs GitLab comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
93
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (6th), Rapid Application Development Software (15th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (6th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
GNU Make
Ranking in Build Automation
24th
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 November 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 6.1%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GNU Make is 1.8%, 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 Make1.8%
Other92.1%
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 feature is security control. I also like the branching and cloning software."
"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"I like GitLab's security and SAS tools."
"GitLab has repository and deployment features that are integrated into one solution, which is its most valuable feature."
"The stability is good."
"GitLab's best features are continuous integration and fast deployment."
"We like the automatic deployment for different environments."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"One of the best things about GNU Make is that, it is available on almost all Linux platforms."
"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."
"Setup is extremely straightforward."
"The initial setup of GNU Make is straightforward."
"GNU Make is such an essential tool that it is almost impossible to imagine working without it. Not having it, developers would probably have to resort to doing everything manually or via shell scripts."
"GNU make is a build automation utility for running builds on various Linux flavored platforms."
"I think this product has all you need."
"Make tool, originally made for the GNU operating system, helps in the generation of executable from the main program source files."
 

Cons

"I rate the support from GitLab a four out of five."
"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."
"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem. There needs to be better and native integration."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"GitLab should include more features because, during the pandemic, companies like Google introduced more features."
"GitLab could consider introducing a code-scanning tool. Purchasing such tools from external markets can incur charges, which might not be favorable. Integrating these features into GitLab would streamline the pipeline and make it more convenient for users."
"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."
"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."
"GNU Make does not provide traditional customer support."
"Make’s reliability is very poor and is not suitable for larger or incremental builds."
"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."
"Poor reliability for larger or incremental builds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version."
"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 is okay."
"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"GitLab is a free solution to use."
"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."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"GNU Make is free and open source software."
"There is no price for this product. No licensing. It’s open-source."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Build Automation solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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 Business39
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise50
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
I was using the free version of GitLab , but I think the price is comparative and not a major differentiator.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Since GitLab [Private Offer Only] the main part is the Git part. With AI being available, I see one thing happening. For example, Claude Code allows people to connect Jira or ClickUp, and then they...
What is your primary use case for GitLab?
My basic use case for Gitlab was the ticket management, the wiki, the CI/CD pipeline, and the code repository. These four use cases form my core usage.
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
No data available
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about GNU Make vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.