GitLab vs Spinnaker comparison

GitLab and Spinnaker are both solutions in the Release Automation category. GitLab is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Spinnaker is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.3. GitLab holds a 29.7% mindshare in RA, compared to Spinnaker’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Spinnaker users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 85 GitLab reviews

20,902 Views
9,406 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Spinnaker

Read 4 Spinnaker reviews

370 Views
370 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

GitLab

Spinnaker

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

GitLab and Spinnaker both operate within the software development category, focusing on continuous integration and deployment. GitLab holds an advantage with its comprehensive feature list and user-friendly interface, whereas Spinnaker specializes in complex deployments with multi-cloud capabilities.

Features: GitLab provides a robust integration for DevOps lifecycle management, including CI/CD pipelines, version control, and monitoring. It offers seamless automation and strong security features, making it versatile for various development tasks. Spinnaker specializes in application release orchestration with support for multi-cloud environments, providing flexibility in delivery strategies and advanced deployment patterns.

Room for Improvement: GitLab could enhance its capacity for complex deployment scenarios to match Spinnaker's strengths. Additionally, while its interface is user-friendly, more customizable options could benefit users with specific needs. Spinnaker might improve its initial setup process to make it more accessible, reducing technical barriers for new users. Further refinement in user interface and comprehensive documentation could also enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab is praised for its straightforward setup and smooth integration with both cloud-based and on-premise solutions. Its extensive documentation and active community support provide a solid customer service experience. Spinnaker, on the other hand, presents challenges in deployment due to complex setup requirements, yet its scalability and strong community support are notable.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers transparent pricing with tiered options that cater to different scales, leading to a rapid ROI given its ample integrated tools. Spinnaker, while free of licensing costs as an open-source platform, might incur higher initial setup costs due to its complexity. However, for long-term operations requiring sophisticated deployments, Spinnaker can provide significant ROI through its specialized efficiencies.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. Spinnaker Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Spinnaker

July 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 Release Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (10th), Build Automation (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)

Spinnaker

Ranking in Release Automation

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 29.7%, down from 36.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation

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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Anurag Bandyopadhyay

Product Development Engineer at Razorpay

Useful to create custom pipelines

Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CI/CD is valuable for me."

"The most valuable aspects of GitLab are the ability to create branches, merge branches, and compare branches to resolve code conflicts."

"GitLab integrates well with other platforms."

"The best thing is that as the developers work on separate tasks, all of the code goes there and the other team members don't have to wait on each other to finish."

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

"This is a scalable solution. We had around 200 users working with it."

"Key features allow creation of well-presented Wiki that includes ideas, development, and domains."

"The stability is good."

More GitLab pros

"There is a good community around the product that makes troubleshooting possible."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its intuitive interface for converting existing Kubernetes specs into working pipelines. It's easy for anyone to deploy anything on any environment when they need to test or deploy for a specific merchant or use case. Instead of going into the specs and changing different variables, they can do it through the UI, which is very useful."

"Spinnaker is used for automating a variety of deployment tasks, infrastructure, provisioning tasks, and all kinds of things."

"The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback."

Cons

"We'd like to see better integration with the Atlassian ecosystem."

"There is a need to improve or adopt AI into the ecosystem like a co-pilot, which Microsoft has done with GitHub."

"In the free version, when a merge request is raised, there is no way to enforce certain rules. We can't enforce that this merge request must be reviewed or approved by two or three people in the team before it is pushed to the master branch. That's why we are exploring using some agents."

"Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does."

"There are missing search features, particularly when searching repositories or applying filters. Additionally, I have encountered issues with the deployment of CI/CD pipelines, especially dealing with variable environments."

"The tool should include a feature that helps to edit the code directly."

"The initial setup was quite challenging because it takes some time to understand how to pull out or push the code."

"I would like to see security increased in the future. A secure environment is very important."

More GitLab cons

"Spinnaker's configuration setup is too complicated and should be made easy."

"Log-wise, we need to understand why something has failed so that we can understand and try to fix it the moment the issue is reported. The solution could use more robust monitoring."

"Regarding areas for improvement, one significant issue is the lack of maker-checker flows to ensure that newly created pipelines are accurate and tested. We currently use an in-house abstraction over Spinnaker to verify pipeline specs, environment variables, etc. It would be beneficial if Spinnaker could offer this functionality within their product."

"Every time it goes to run a pipeline, it just generates a lot of data, and its database is not exactly tuned out of the box, meaning it is not tuned for high scalability."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"I'm not sure if they have some kind of discount. I've been negotiating with them on prices before, and I believe they weren't too happy to give discounts, but list prices are $19 per user, per month for Premium and $99 per user, per month for Ultimate. So, the difference between Premium and Ultimate is a bit bigger, and in most companies, you need to build some type of business case."

"The price of GitLab could be better, it is expensive."

"GitLab is a free solution to use."

"The solution is based on a subscription model and is reasonably priced."

"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."

"GitLab is highly priced for smaller teams, but it's okay if considering a user base of thousands."

"This product is not very expensive but the price can be better."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"Spinnaker is an open-source product. The tool is completely free for users."

"The solution is open-source."

"Spinnaker is a free-to-use, open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Retailer

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

Regarding improvements, making task management is something that GitLab can potentially make easier, similar to what DevOps or Jira does.

See all answers

What do you like most about Spinnaker?

The most valuable feature of Spinnaker is the rollback.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spinnaker?

The solution is open-source.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spinnaker?

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs GitLab

Compared 27% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 15% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 6% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Octopus Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 41% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Spinnaker

Compared 20% of the time

UrbanCode Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 14% of the time

More Spinnaker Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

July 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Release Automation

June 2025

Download Spinnaker product report

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

Spinnaker provides application management and deployment to help you release software changes with high velocity and confidence. Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform that combines a powerful and flexible pipeline management system with integrations to the major cloud providers. If you are looking to standardize your release processes and improve quality, Spinnaker is for you.

Spinnaker

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

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Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Spinnaker

July 2025

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