We compared Gitlab and Microsoft Azure DevOps based on our user’s reviews in four categories. After reviewing the collected data. you can find our conclusion below:
Comparison Results - GitLab vs Azure DevOps:
All other things being equal, Microsoft Azure Devops seems to be a better choice, given that it has better support and is less expensive than Gitlab.
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment. It is also stable."
"A user friendly solution."
"We like that we can create branches and then the branches can be reviewed and you can mesh those branches back. You can independently work with your own branch, you don't need to really control the core of other people."
"The stability is good."
"We like that we can have an all-encompassing product and don't have to implement different solutions."
"The scalability is good."
"Of all available products, it was the easiest to use and easy to install."
"GitLab offers a good interface for doing code reviews between two colleagues."
"You can have test cases in DevOps but not in JIRA. And, DevOps has advantages in terms of executing those test cases."
"We are able to generate many different types of reports from Azure."
"The one thing that really stands out to me is how you can filter and how you can do your reporting and filter the tasks and everything by user."
"What I like the most is the DevOps Boards. It's easy to create a hierarchical project structure, assign tasks to people, and to track their tasks."
"They have been lately adding features to the services on a regular basis. Every two weeks, they are adding functionality to Azure DevOps Services to match it with what Azure DevOps Server or on-prem would offer. So, we continue to get more robust functionality. My favorite right now is that they are starting to open up the API availability within Azure DevOps Services. Another thing that I like about Azure DevOps is that you can use it with any of the products that are on the market. You can integrate it with Jenkins and other open-source products to complete that fully functional CI, CD, CT, CM, and CS pipeline. It continues to enhance."
"Overall, so far we have no major issues to report."
"The installation is very straightforward."
"What I like the most about this product is that it's free and it's secure."
"It can be free for commercial use."
"I would like more Agile features in the Premium version. The Premium version should have all Agile features that exist in the Ultimate version. IBM AOM has a complete Agile implementation, but in GitLab, you only have these features if you buy the Ultimate version. It would be good if we can use these in the Premium version."
"I would like to see static analysis also embedded in GitLab. That would also help us. If there's something that it does internally by GitLab and then that is already tied up with your pipeline and then it can tell you that you're coding is good or your code is not great. Based on that, it would pass or fail. That should be streamlined. I would think that would help to a greater extent, in terms of having one solution rather than depending on multiple vendors."
"It should be used by a larger number of people. They should raise awareness."
"Perhaps the integration could be better."
"It would be better if there weren't any outages. There are occasions where we usually see a lot of outages using GitLab. It happens at least once a week or something like that. Whatever pipelines you're running, to check the logs, you need to have a different set of tools like Argus or something like that. If you have pipelines running on GitLab, you need a separate service deployed to view the logs, which is kind of a pain. If the logs can be used conveniently on GitLab, that would be definitely helpful. I'm not talking about the CI/CD pipelines but the back-end services and microservices deployed over GitLab. To view the logs for those microservices, you need to have separate log viewers, which is kind of a pain."
"The documentation could be improved to help newcomers better understand things like creating new branches."
"The solution could improve by providing more integration into the CI/CD pipeline, an autocomplete search tool, and more supporting documentation."
"The price could be lowered. It would be nice if it was cheaper."
"Microsoft Azure DevOps could improve by having better integration with other email servers."
"I think Azure DevOps could improve the traceability or business intelligence about the execution of DevOps processes."
"They have to add more features such as schedules and more flexibility in the platform."
"The user interface could be improved."
"With the query feature, we have to group items, so it becomes difficult for everyone to understand it. It's easier in JIRA, which has filters and other query options."
"The UI could be improved."
"Being more technology-agnostic through ease of integration would be beneficial."
GitLab is ranked 3rd in Release Automation with 22 reviews while Microsoft Azure DevOps is ranked 1st in Release Automation with 93 reviews. GitLab is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Azure DevOps is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of GitLab writes "A double-sided solution for both DevOps and version management". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure DevOps writes "Robust functionality, good integration, continually enhanced, and easy to scale". GitLab is most compared with TeamCity, Tekton, Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, AWS CodePipeline and GoCD, whereas Microsoft Azure DevOps is most compared with Jira, TFS, ServiceNow IT Business Management, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Rally Software. See our GitLab vs. Microsoft Azure DevOps report.
See our list of best Release Automation vendors and best Enterprise Agile Planning Tools vendors.
We monitor all Release Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.