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GitLab vs Harness comparison

 

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
1st
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (11th), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
9th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Cost Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 12.6%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Harness is 7.1%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitLab12.6%
Harness7.1%
Other80.3%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Linwei Yuan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring
Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"GitLab's best features are maintenance, branch integration, and development infrastructure."
"If you want to maintain your issues in GitLab and raise your book of work and features, then GitLab is a great tool for collaboration and integration with code deployment and CICD pipelines."
"The important feature is the entire process of versioning source code maintenance and easy deployment. It is a necessity for the CI/CD pipeline."
"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."
"The most valuable feature of GitLab is its security."
"It scales well."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what; this is the best feature which is useful for all companies."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
 

Cons

"GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient."
"In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents."
"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."
"I would like configuration of a YML file to be done via UI rather than a code file."
"The integration could be slightly better."
"We do face issues in our company when we run out of disk space."
"GitLab's Windows version is yet not available and having this would be an improvement."
"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."
"GitLab's pricing is good compared to others on the market."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."
"The price is okay."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"I don't mind the price because I use the free version."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise42
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The pricing and cost are on par with other tools and are neither too expensive nor cheap.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.
What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment.
What is your primary use case for Harness?
Our primary use case for Harness ( /products/harness-reviews ) is as a deployment tool. Although I am not a DevOps engineer, my team uses Harness ( /products/harness-reviews ) for deployment purpos...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
Armory
 

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
Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,685 professionals have used our research since 2012.