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GitLab vs Sonatype Lifecycle comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
7.6
GitLab improves ROI by increasing efficiency, reducing deployment time, and enhancing DevOps through cost-saving, automation, and vulnerability management.
Sentiment score
6.9
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances visibility, security, and productivity, reducing vulnerability analysis time and lowering risks in application development.
Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate.
We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.
We have seen cost savings and efficiency improvements as we now know what happens in what was previously a black box.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
GitLab's support varies by license; paid users praise responsiveness, while free version users rely on community forums and documentation.
Sentiment score
6.9
Sonatype Lifecycle's customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, despite occasional delays with product enhancement requests.
We have rarely needed to escalate issues to technical support since GitLab usually runs seamlessly.
I have interacted with architects for some advice during the implementation, and they were prompt in their response.
I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch.
They are helpful when we raise any tickets.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
GitLab's scalable container architecture supports diverse environments, flexible deployment, and smooth integration, despite some configuration and scaling challenges.
Sentiment score
8.2
Sonatype Lifecycle is praised for infrastructure scalability and flexibility, but users report challenges with clustering and configuration complexities.
It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.
We're transitioning to OpenShift for future scalability with increased user numbers.
For scaling, other deployment options from GitLab's side need to be adopted.
JFrog is easier to configure for high availability as it does not require extra components.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
GitLab is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mainly under heavy load or during updates.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sonatype Lifecycle is reliable and efficient, with minimal downtime and ease of use, even for large implementations.
I have not encountered any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.
The updates are frequent and demanding, happening at least once a week due to security reasons.
Sonatype Lifecycle is very stable, especially in the binary repository management use case for managing binary artifacts.
 

Room For Improvement

GitLab users seek improved CI/CD automation, integrations, user interface, project management, security, pricing, and support for enhanced usability.
Sonatype Lifecycle should improve integration, reporting, support, user interface, and adapt to modern practices for better user experience.
It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.
It is essential to conduct proper testing, such as unit tests and code coverage, within the SDLC pipelines.
GitLab can improve its user interface to make conflict resolution more user-friendly.
We also noticed a lack of detailed information for configuring Sonatype Lifecycle for high availability and data recovery.
 

Setup Cost

GitLab provides flexible pricing with open-source access and paid tiers, catering to different enterprise needs and budgets.
Sonatype Lifecycle offers competitive pricing with valuable features, though costs may impact startups due to licensing complexity.
Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
The price is high, and it limits user accessibility.
For larger numbers like our case with 1,000 user licenses, JFrog becomes much more cost-effective, roughly ten times cheaper than Sonatype.
 

Valuable Features

GitLab excels in UI, CI/CD, code management, and integration, offering user-friendly, efficient, and scalable development and deployment features.
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances security with seamless DevOps integration, user-friendly interface, real-time updates, and efficient dependency management.
As we implement automated testing and DevSecOps, it speeds up the process by forty to sixty percent.
The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.
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.
The integration into our CICD pipeline enables us to continuously monitor code changes and identify new vulnerabilities.
The most valuable feature for us is Sonatype Lifecycle's capability in identifying vulnerabilities.
 

Categories and Ranking

GitLab
Ranking in Application Security Tools
9th
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
Sonatype Lifecycle
Ranking in Application Security Tools
5th
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Software Supply Chain Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of GitLab is 4.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sonatype Lifecycle is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
SrinathKuppannan2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily identifies problematic versions and ensures adherence to regulatory standards like HIPAA, critical for industries dealing with sensitive information
While Sonatype Lifecycle effectively manages artifacts in Nexus Repository and performs code firewall checks based on rules, it has the potential to expand further. I am looking forward to additional features similar to SonarQube, especially since licenses are often split per component. SonarType could integrate cloud-based capabilities, addressing the increasing shift towards cloud workloads. While there have been demos and discussions around this, significant progress on scanning and analyzing cloud images remains to be seen. I am looking forward to Sonatype incorporating these enhancements, particularly in regard to cloud-based features. On-prem workloads are getting to the cloud workloads. * I would like to see more cloud-related insights, such as logging capabilities for the images we use and image scanning information. * Additionally, it would be beneficial to have insights into the stages of dependencies and ensure they comply with standards. If there are any violations in respect to CVSS reports, * Integrating CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) report rules into the Lifecycle module to detect and report violations would be valuable. I am hoping to see these enhancements from Sonatype in the future. On the security side, I think there's a lot of development needed. There are many security tools on the market, like open-source ones, that Sonatype doesn't integrate with.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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.
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.
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...
How does Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle compare with SonarQube?
We like the data that Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle consistently delivers. This solution helps us in fixing and understanding the issues a lot quicker. The policy engine allows you to set up different t...
What do you like most about Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?
Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?
According to my calculations, if you are working with up to 200 developers, Sonatype is cheaper than JFrog. However, for larger numbers like our case with 1,000 user licenses, JFrog becomes much mo...
 

Also Known As

Fuzzit
Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, Nexus Lifecycle
 

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
Genome.One, Blackboard, Crediterform, Crosskey, Intuit, Progress Software, Qualys, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Sonatype Lifecycle and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
853,271 professionals have used our research since 2012.