GitLab vs LaunchDarkly comparison

GitLab and LaunchDarkly are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6, while LaunchDarkly is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. GitLab holds a 15.4% mindshare in BA, compared to LaunchDarkly’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of LaunchDarkly users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 84 GitLab reviews

5,347 Views
4,325 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

LaunchDarkly

Read 7 LaunchDarkly reviews

174 Views
38 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GitLab

LaunchDarkly

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

GitLab and LaunchDarkly compete in the software development tools category, offering solutions that cater to different aspects of the development lifecycle. GitLab seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive DevOps features that integrate through the entire development process, whereas LaunchDarkly excels in feature management and experimentation capabilities.

Features: GitLab offers a comprehensive set of DevOps tools, including CI/CD pipelines, integrated version control, and project management functionalities. Its platform facilitates streamlined development processes and supports various integrations, making it a popular choice for teams seeking an all-in-one solution. LaunchDarkly provides precise feature management, allowing businesses to control feature releases with ease, facilitate experimentation, and manage risks during deployments, focusing primarily on continuous delivery.

Room for Improvement: GitLab could enhance its feature set by improving user support and documentation to help users navigate its variety of offerings more efficiently. There could also be improvements in the onboarding process and advanced security features. LaunchDarkly might benefit from expanding its integrations with other DevOps tools and providing more comprehensive analytics for feature experimentation. It could also enhance user training resources and documentation for better client onboarding and usage.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab provides streamlined deployment with extensive documentation support, complemented by a robust community. This makes integration into diverse tech stacks relatively seamless and enabled through community collaboration and troubleshooting forums. LaunchDarkly prioritizes efficient deployment processes and offers responsive customer service that focuses on resolving specific user issues promptly, providing a more tailored support experience.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers flexible pricing structures that can provide strong long-term returns, making it economically appealing for broad development needs. Its pricing is based on the number of users and features selected, often giving clear ROI through cost-effective access to its extensive capabilities. LaunchDarkly's pricing might seem higher initially, but it delivers substantial ROI where enhanced feature management and reduced deployment risks are business priorities; this is particularly beneficial for companies focusing on innovative feature-driven development.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. LaunchDarkly Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. LaunchDarkly

June 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

GitLab

Ranking in Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (9th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (6th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (3rd), DevSecOps (1st)

LaunchDarkly

Ranking in Build Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 15.4%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LaunchDarkly is 0.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani

Manager, Engineering at 7-Eleven

Improved agility and time to market with CI/CD enhancements

The CI/CD pipelines in GitLab ( /products/gitlab-reviews ) 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.

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James Bayhylle

Principal Technical Program Manager at ChowNow

Provides risk-free releases with control access and A/B testing

It allowed us to deploy faster. Despite having a rigorous code review process that slowed things down, once the code was reviewed, LaunchDarkly enabled safe deployments. If there was ever an issue, we could easily roll back a particular release by simply turning off the feature flag. When configuring and setting this up, begin with feature sets that are relatively small in scope. This helps build the necessary skills to leverage the product effectively while maintaining control over the blast radius, thus reducing risk to your customers and application in case of misconfiguration. As you gain more experience with the solution, it's crucial to have a process to manage feature flag sprawl, as mentioned earlier. Implementing a life cycle management system for your feature flags is essential. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten because of its intuitiveness and ease of use.

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

"When a developer checks in code, it is automatically built and deployed, and automated test cases are also run. We have extensive integration with GitLab, which helps us with source code management. We run the static code analysis using SonarQube."

"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

"We use GitLab in the new project for CI/CD, integration, and deployment."

"The user interface is really good so that helps with huge teams who need to collaborate."

"I like that you can use GitLab as a double-sided solution for both DevOps and version management. It's a good product for working in these two areas, and the user interface makes it easy to understand."

"The solution's most valuable features are pipelines."

More GitLab pros

"The initial setup is very easy."

"The setup is easy."

"I like that it offers the ability to control the flags."

"From the development side, it allows us to manage multiple things."

"It has really helped during the series of product lines and faster deployment and faster development."

"The ability to turn off a flag is crucial when a task is not complete, especially if there is an error in a commit."

"I appreciate that we can release any feature in production and maintain control over it."

Cons

"GitLab can improve the integration with third-party applications. It could be made easier. Additionally, having API control from my application could be helpful."

"It's more related to the supporting layer of features, such as issue management and issue tracking. We tend to always use, for example, Jira next to it. That doesn't mean that GitLab should build something similar to Jira because that will always have its place, but they could grow a bit in those kinds of supporting features. I see some, for example, covering ITSM on a DevOps team level, and that's one of the things that I and my current client would find really helpful. It's understandably not going to be their main focus and their core, and whenever you are with a company that needs a bit more advanced features on that specific topic, you're probably still going to integrate with another tool like Jira Service Management, for example. However, some basic features on things like that could be really helpful."

"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 is a little complex to set up the pipelines within the solution."

"You need to have a good knowledge of the product in order to use it."

"GitLab should work on improving their user interface for GitOps as it is lagging behind."

"There is room for improvement in GitLab Agents."

"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."

More GitLab cons

"Right now, no improvements are needed."

"When the system has an excessive number of feature flags, managing them can become cumbersome."

"I have used LaunchDarkly for around two and a half years and I haven't faced any issues with it."

"The feature where one feature flag is dependent on another could be explored more for our usage."

"I strongly believe they need to develop a strategy for handling situations where LaunchDarkly goes down."

"Fetching information about multiple flags in a single action would be beneficial."

"We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."

"GitLab is an open-source solution."

"It is very expensive. We can't bear it now, and we have to find another solution. We have a yearly subscription in which we can increase the number of licenses, but we have to pay at the end of the year."

"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."

"The initial setup cost is excellent and you can add the premium features later."

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

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

One significant feature we lack is the configuration that enforces code reviews, which simplifies the development life cycle. Unfortunately, this is available only at a higher license level than we...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LaunchDarkly?

I consider the pricing to be high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LaunchDarkly?

We need experience to use it, and the initial setup can be difficult. Also, sometimes it has breakdowns. I would rate LaunchDarkly a seven out of ten.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LaunchDarkly?

We use LaunchDarkly for managing feature flags. It helps manage the keys to control what users view on our screens.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 24% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 15% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 7% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

AWS CodePipeline vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Harness vs LaunchDarkly

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

June 2025

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Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab is a complete DevOps platform that enables teams to collaborate and deliver software faster.

It provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, from planning and development to testing, deployment, and monitoring.

With GitLab, teams can streamline their workflows, automate processes, and improve productivity.

GitLab

LaunchDarkly is acclaimed for its feature flag management, enabling safer, high-velocity code deployment and precise control over rollouts. Organizations use it to test, deploy, and manage features across user segments, performing canary releases and quick rollbacks without new code deployment. Users praise its robust flag system, real-time updates, detailed targeting, comprehensive analytics, and strong integration capabilities, significantly enhancing development efficiency and productivity.

LaunchDarkly

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

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. LaunchDarkly

June 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. LaunchDarkly

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