GitLab vs Spinnaker comparison

GitLab and Spinnaker are both solutions in the Release Automation category. GitLab is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while Spinnaker is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.3. GitLab holds a 29.0% mindshare in RA, compared to Spinnaker’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Spinnaker users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 86 GitLab reviews

19,204 Views
8,450 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Spinnaker

Read 4 Spinnaker reviews

392 Views
392 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

GitLab

Spinnaker

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Spinnaker

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 867,370 peers since 2012

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (11th), 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 September 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 29.0%, down from 37.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spinnaker is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	29.0%
Spinnaker	1.8%
Other	69.2%

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 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.

Read full review

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

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

"The stability is good."

"GitLab is being used as a repository for our codebase and it is a one stop DevOps tool we use in our team."

"The SaaS setup is impressive, and it has DAST solutioning."

"The CI/CD pipeline with Helm has significantly improved deployment speed and efficiency."

"The most valuable features of GitLab are ease of use and highly intuitive UI and performance."

"It is user-friendly, easy to use, and easy to administer."

"It scales well."

More GitLab pros

"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."

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

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

Cons

"GitLab can improve by integrating with more tools, such as servers with Docker."

"As GitLab is not perfect, what needs improvement in the solution is the Wiki feature of the groups or the repertories because currently, it's not searchable by default. You'll need an indexing service such as Elasticsearch to make it searchable, and that requires too much work, so for me, it's the main feature that should be improved in GitLab. In the next version of the solution, from the top of my head, the documentation could be improved. Besides the Wiki, it would be good if there's documentation that would be automatically generated based on the code repository. In other words, there should be some tutorials from GitLab for developers in the next release."

"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."

"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."

"Currently, GitLab is not easy to scale because GitLab has specific deployment instructions. We deploy it on one of the VMs."

"I'm new to GitLab, so I would appreciate more documentation about the code and commands."

"Expand features to match other tools such as a static code analysis tool so third-party integrations are not required."

"Perhaps the integration could be better."

More GitLab cons

"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."

"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."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In total, I believe we have more than 300 licenses spread over about 100 users, though I can't comment on the costs involved."

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

"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."

"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."

"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."

"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."

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

"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."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is open-source."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Release Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	35
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	42

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 34% of the time

GitHub CoPilot vs GitLab

Compared 14% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 5% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

More GitLab Competitors

Octopus Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 33% of the time

UrbanCode Deploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Spinnaker

Compared 16% of the time

AWS CodeDeploy vs Spinnaker

Compared 12% of the time

More Spinnaker Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

September 2025

Download GitLab product report

Buyer's Guide

Release Automation

September 2025

Download Spinnaker product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

No data available

Overview

GitLab offers a secure and user-friendly platform for CI/CD pipeline management, code repository control, and collaboration, enhancing development speed and efficiency. It facilitates automation with extensive customization and tool integration, ideal for DevOps processes.

GitLab supports source code management, version control, and collaborative development. It's frequently used in CI/CD processes to automate builds and deployments while integrating DevOps practices. GitLab allows companies to manage repositories, automate pipelines, conduct code reviews, and maintain development lifecycles. The platform supports infrastructure and configuration management, enabling efficient code collaboration, deployment automation, and comprehensive repository handling. Many organizations commit and deploy developed code using GitLab's capabilities.

What are GitLab's most valuable features?

CI/CD Pipeline Management: Streamlines development through automated testing and deployment.
User-Friendly Interface: Ensures ease of collaboration and task automation.
Code Merging and Branching: Facilitates smooth code integration and version control.
Security Platform: Provides strong security features for safe development.
Tool Integration: Enhances functionality with diverse tool integration.

What benefits should users evaluate?

Development Speed: Accelerates processes through automation.
Collaboration Ease: Simplifies team interactions and workflow.
Customization Options: Offers extensive personalization for specific needs.
Comprehensive Documentation: Provides detailed guidance for users.
Secure Platform: Maintains integrity with robust security features.

In specific industries, GitLab serves as a backbone for source code management and CI/CD implementation. Companies leverage its capabilities for infrastructure management and deployment automation, thus streamlining project delivery timelines. Its ability to handle configuration management and code repositories effectively aids in maintaining development lifecycles, making it a preferred choice for organizations committed to enhancing their DevOps practices.

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. Spinnaker

September 2025

Free Report: GitLab vs. Spinnaker

Find out what your peers are saying about GitLab vs. Spinnaker and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our GitLab vs. Spinnaker report.

See our list of best Release Automation vendors.

We monitor all Release Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.