GitLab vs Polarion ALM comparison

GitLab and Siemens are both solutions in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category. GitLab is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Siemens is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. GitLab holds a 25.5% mindshare in EAP, compared to Siemens’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Siemens users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 84 GitLab reviews

9,580 Views
125 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Read 22 Polarion ALM reviews

1,223 Views
65 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

GitLab

Polarion ALM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Polarion ALM and GitLab are competitors in the application lifecycle management and development operations sectors. While Polarion ALM is favored for its traceability and compliance features in regulated industries, GitLab's superior DevOps capabilities and CI/CD integration provide substantial benefits for agile environments.

Features: Polarion ALM offers customizable traceability, compliance management, and robust version control. GitLab excels in continuous integration, seamless deployment, and provides an all-in-one platform that simplifies workflows.

Room for Improvement: Polarion ALM could enhance its ease of use, reduce the complexity of its setup, and improve out-of-the-box functionalities. GitLab might expand its feature set, streamline its advanced settings, and enhance user onboarding processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Polarion ALM requires expert configuration and longer setup times, though its customer service is reliable. GitLab offers easier deployment with cloud-based options and responsive support, facilitated by comprehensive documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Polarion ALM incurs higher initial costs but yields strong ROI in regulatory-focused environments. GitLab's scalable pricing model caters to various teams, offering faster ROI through integrated functionalities readily available upon setup.

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

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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 Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

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

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Agile Planning Tools category, the mindshare of GitLab is 25.5%, down from 32.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 4.6%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

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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Dina Bindi

Information and Communication technology at CNH Industrial

Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility

It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

"We have seen a couple of merge requests or pull requests raised in GitLab. I see the interface, the way it shows the difference between the two source codes, that it is easy for anyone to do the review and then accept the request; the pull request is the valuable feature."

"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."

"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."

"GitLab is very well-organized and easy to use. Also, it offers most features that customers need."

"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."

"I like that it's easy to deploy our services over GitLab. The customer support is also good with a really active community. You have a lot of support that you can get online with your stack. That is probably one of the benefits of using GitLab. It's also really fast."

More GitLab pros

"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."

"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."

"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."

"The technical support is quite good."

"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."

"It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective."

More Polarion ALM pros

Cons

"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."

"GitLab's UI could be improved."

"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."

"I believe there's room for improvement in the advanced features, particularly in enhancing the pipeline functionalities."

"The documentation is confusing."

"There was a problem with the build environment when we were looking at developing iOS applications. iOS build require Mac machines and there are no Mac machines provided by GitLab in their cloud. So to build for mobile iOS application, we needed to use our own Mac machine within our own infrastructure. If GitLab were to provide a feature such that an iOS application could also be built through GitLab directly, that would be great."

"We would like to generate document pages from the sources."

"It would be really good if they integrated more features in application security."

More GitLab cons

"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 ease-of-use could be improved a little."

"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."

"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."

"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."

"Test management lacks an automated process."

"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."

"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."

More Polarion ALM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that we pay approximately $100 USD per month."

"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."

"We are using the free version of GitLab."

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

"It seems reasonable. Our IT team manages the licenses."

"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."

"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."

"We are currently using the open-source version."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"It is an expensive product."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

26%

Computer Software Company

13%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

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What do you like most about Polarion ALM?

It is a very stable solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...

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What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?

As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...

See all answers

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Product Reports

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GitLab

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

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

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

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

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

June 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Polarion ALM

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