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GitLab vs Semgrep comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
GitLab boosts efficiency and collaboration, enabling faster deployments, increased release frequencies, and reduced vulnerabilities for a positive ROI.
Sentiment score
6.6
Semgrep improved ROI by accelerating development, reducing costs, enhancing code quality, and increasing efficiency through automated code analysis.
Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.
IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione
In terms of operational efficiency, a ten to twenty percent increase in speed could quite easily be seen from using the Issues and Epics tracking feature.
Cloud Ops Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We have saved time by automating code analysis processes, which has reduced the number of employees needed for manual reviews.
DevOps SRO Specialist at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
This can be translated to being able to do the same amount of work with less technicians.
SecOps Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 501-1,000 employees
Tasks that previously took days are completed in significantly less time.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
GitLab support is generally well-rated, with helpful responses, strong documentation, and good third-party tool integration.
Sentiment score
5.6
Semgrep's customer service excels in responsiveness and reliability, with strong community support and effective documentation reducing direct support needs.
We have rarely needed to escalate issues to technical support since GitLab usually runs seamlessly.
AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I have interacted with architects for some advice during the implementation, and they were prompt in their response.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
When I created custom rules, I had some doubts, and the documentation was very helpful, simple, and easy to understand.
Senior Software Engineer 2 at Porch
Their documentation and community are very active, so most of the time when problems occur, I get a solution.
Security Researcher at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customer support and services for Semgrep are very reliable and good.
Angular developer at Flourish software
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
GitLab is scalable and versatile, managing multiple users and projects efficiently, though self-hosting can pose technical challenges.
Sentiment score
8.5
Semgrep efficiently scales across various organizational sizes, handling microservices architectures and complex codebases with fast, cloud-native performance.
It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.
Senior Application Developer at IBM
We're transitioning to OpenShift for future scalability with increased user numbers.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
For scaling, other deployment options from GitLab's side need to be adopted.
Manager, Engineering at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
I was able to control it from 10 repositories or 10 services to thousands of repositories in a couple of minutes very simply.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
This is an open-source tool, so it absolutely does the job, but if you were to implement a tool such as this in an enterprise, this would probably not be scalable.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Semgrep makes it easy to integrate and grow within any environment without concern for crashes.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab is highly stable with minimal issues and minor slowdowns, ensuring reliable performance even under heavy loads.
Sentiment score
8.3
Semgrep is stable, but scan completion and repo onboarding issues affect efficiency in large repositories, needing priority fixes.
I have not encountered any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.
AWS DevOps/ Site Reliability Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The updates are frequent and demanding, happening at least once a week due to security reasons.
Chief Technology Officer at Acclym
We raised a request with GitLab support, but they were unable to help because they could not find the root cause of what went wrong.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
If there is no master branch or default branch, the tool fails to identify it and will never scan it unless manually somebody looks into it and fixes the issue.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
Since I have been using it, I have not experienced any downtime.
Angular developer at Flourish software
Semgrep is stable, as far as my experience indicates.
Senior Software Engineer 2 at Porch
 

Room For Improvement

GitLab requires better integration, performance, security, UI, pricing, documentation, AI, project management, CI/CD, and third-party compatibility.
Semgrep needs improved usability, speed, documentation, memory efficiency, IDE integration, UI, notifications, AI features, and reporting visualization.
It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is essential to conduct proper testing, such as unit tests and code coverage, within the SDLC pipelines.
Manager, Engineering at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly.
Senior Application Developer at IBM
The UI and additional dashboarding and other details would definitely make the tool more user-friendly and more of a candidate to be implemented in an enterprise.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Currently, they are working on identifying business logic vulnerabilities or privilege escalation vulnerabilities by looking at the code, and they should continue to focus on and improve this effort.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
More advanced dependency analysis features in the SCA part and deeper vulnerability databases would be beneficial.
SecOps Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 501-1,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

GitLab offers a range of pricing plans, praised for features and value but sometimes seen as expensive for small teams.
Enterprise users transition from Semgrep's free plan to affordable paid options, appreciating its value and cost-efficiency.
Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.
Senior Application Developer at IBM
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The price is high, and it limits user accessibility.
IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione
Once we fully integrated it into our company, it has proven to be price-efficient at around $30 a month.
Senior Software Engineer 2 at Porch
It is basically open-source, so the cost to set up is no cost.
Security Researcher at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It offers very reasonable pricing and costs.
Angular developer at Flourish software
 

Valuable Features

GitLab excels with CI/CD pipelines, automation, and security, enhancing collaboration and productivity with seamless integration and role-based access.
Semgrep enhances security with secret scanning, custom rules, CI/CD integration, and AI triage, boosting development speed and efficiency.
As we implement automated testing and DevSecOps, it speeds up the process by forty to sixty percent.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.
IT Software Architect at ANAC - Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione
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.
Manager, Engineering at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
When you triage with AI, it gathers context around the finding and reduces the noise about 80 to 90 percent of the time, asking you to focus only on findings that really matter.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
The Software Composition Analysis is the most valuable feature in Semgrep.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The best feature of Semgrep is its ability to highlight high priority issues during scanning, making it critical for developers to address these vulnerabilities promptly.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
 

Categories and Ranking

GitLab
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
6th
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (3rd), Release Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (15th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
Semgrep
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
4th
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Supply Chain Management Software (4th), Static Code Analysis (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 2.6%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Semgrep is 2.3%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Semgrep2.3%
GitLab2.6%
Other95.1%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

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.
Manjunath Maneppagol - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
Context-aware code analysis has reduced noise and now improves developer experience with actionable security findings
I have consistently observed that their scan time is an issue for mono repos. Sometimes with their AI-based scanning, when you triage that scan, the scan never completes or finishes(, which makes it difficult. Another consistent issue is that whenever you have a new repo to onboard to the platform, the tool ideally should detect the master branch by default. However, sometimes the tool fails to identify it and will never scan it unless manually somebody looks into it and fixes the issue. Although their support team is really good, this issue was present six or eight months ago during the POC and is still present now. If it is affecting multiple customers, it should be prioritized and fixed. I would say that their integration aspects could have been improved. I see a lot of different security solutions that provide flexibility to the security teams based on Jira project, team divisions, Slack, and all those can be very much easily customized. Semgrep needs to work on the enhancement of their notification capabilities. Currently, they are working on identifying business logic vulnerabilities or privilege escalation vulnerabilities by looking at the code, and they should continue to focus on and improve this effort. Regarding stability, whenever you have a mono-repo which is a very large repository, the scan never finishes or the scan never kicks in. At that time, you have to reach out to the support team and ask them to expand the resources in the back end to fix it. This is an issue I keep seeing often on that platform.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise50
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
I was using the free version of GitLab , but I think the price is comparative and not a major differentiator.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Since GitLab [Private Offer Only] the main part is the Git part. With AI being available, I see one thing happening. For example, Claude Code allows people to connect Jira or ClickUp, and then they...
What is your primary use case for GitLab?
My basic use case for Gitlab was the ticket management, the wiki, the CI/CD pipeline, and the code repository. These four use cases form my core usage.
What needs improvement with Semgrep?
The features could be enhanced with better documentation and more user-friendly interfaces for beginners.Semgrep can be improved by further enhancing its reporting features to provide more detailed...
What is your primary use case for Semgrep?
A quick specific example of how I use Semgrep in my pipelines is a recent scenario where it helped me catch a critical vulnerability before it went into production, significantly improving our proc...
What advice do you have for others considering Semgrep?
I would rate Semgrep an eight out of ten overall. I chose a six or seven out of ten when considering specific aspects because while Semgrep is powerful, there are still areas that need improvement,...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
Semgrep Code, Semgrep Supply Chain, Semgrep AppSec Platform
 

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
Policygenius, Tide, Lyft, Thinkific, FloQast, Vanta, and Fareportal
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Semgrep and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.