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GitLab vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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 Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 31.5%, up from 30.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 3.1%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab31.5%
Polarion ALM3.1%
Other65.4%
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
 

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.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"GitLab is very useful for pipelines, continuous integration, and continuous deployment."
"It's a great toolbox where the CI/CD pipeline is the fundamental component, but there are so many other features that you can pull from, which makes it a very powerful tool. My current client is using AWS, and they can, of course, use AWS CodePipeline, but GitLab is much more mature than that, and it also gives you the freedom to decide to go to another platform or have a multi-cloud strategy and things like that. That freedom for me is also very valuable."
"GitLab is a wholly complete solution and it is for this reason that I can recommend it to other users."
"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."
"CI/CD is very good. The version control system is also good. These are the two features that we use."
"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."
"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."
"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."
"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
"It's all in one place, where every department can utilize the same tool."
"The solution offers good integration."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"This one tool incorporates almost all engineering tasks we need to do for one project."
"The technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"The pricing has been substantially increased, which is a major concern."
"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."
"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 can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."
"GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient."
"Atlassian offers more products than GitLab. GitLab offers source control management, version control and collaboration between developers. Atlassian offers features on top of this as well as more integration points for developers."
"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."
"It has fewer options, and its UI is not so user-friendly."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"The solution can be improved by making it more user-friendly, and a server-based application rather than client based."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"The solution can be improved by making it more user-friendly, and a server-based application rather than client based."
"The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates."
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."
"Its price is fine. It is on the cheaper side and not expensive. You have to pay additionally for GitLab CI/CD minutes. Initially, we used the free version. When we ran out of GitLab minutes, we migrated to the paid version."
"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"The price is okay."
"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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"It is an expensive product."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
31%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 setup cost was moderate and not very high. For GitLab SaaS, the initial setup cost was minimal, while self-managed GitLab involved infrastructure, VM storage backups, runner configuration, and ...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
A pain point I have encountered with GitLab is that large GitLab-ci.yml files become hard to read and maintain. YAML syntax is strict, and errors are easy to make, while debugging pipeline logic ca...
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

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
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.