GitLab vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

GitLab and Broadcom are both solutions in the Build Automation category. GitLab is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.7. GitLab holds a 10.6% mindshare in BA, compared to Broadcom’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of GitLab users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

GitLab

Read 88 GitLab reviews

17,371 Views
3,822 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 23 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

6,474 Views
388 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

GitLab

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

GitLab and VMware Tanzu Platform compete in the cloud and development tools space. GitLab appears to hold an advantage in repository and CI/CD pipeline management, whereas VMware Tanzu excels in Kubernetes and VMware integration.

Features: GitLab offers powerful repository tools, CI/CD pipeline, and integration capabilities, allowing for effective branch management and code reviews. VMware Tanzu Platform excels in Kubernetes cluster management and integrates seamlessly with VMware infrastructure, enhancing microservices and container orchestration with strong integration across virtualization, networking, and storage components.

Room for Improvement: GitLab struggles with integration beyond Kubernetes, lacking compatibility with platforms such as AWS, ETS, and Jira. Improvements are also needed in documentation and reporting features. VMware Tanzu needs better customization, visibility, and integration with non-VMware products, as well as reduced costs and enhanced disaster recovery options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitLab supports deployments across public, private, and hybrid clouds, benefiting from a large user community despite less responsive direct support without paid tiers. VMware Tanzu supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, with support experience influenced by knowledge of the VMware ecosystem and licensing terms. Both products emphasize the need for in-house expertise for effective management.

Pricing and ROI: GitLab offers a free version and paid licenses, proving cost-effective for small teams but expensive for some organizations. Its automation enhances ROI. VMware Tanzu's pricing is higher, fitting larger enterprises comfortably within VMware's ecosystem, and is known for enterprise-grade integration and scalability at a higher premium.

To learn more, read our detailed GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 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 Build Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (12th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Build Automation

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (11th), Cloud Management (23rd), Development Platforms (2nd), Container Management (5th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of GitLab is 10.6%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Build Automation Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
GitLab	10.6%
VMware Tanzu Platform	1.8%
Other	87.6%

Build 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

ErmiasGirma

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools

Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

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

"I recommend GitLab for DevOps engineers."

"GitLab's source control is excellent."

"Git merging allows us to track the details of how and who has done what; this is the best feature which is useful for all companies."

"GitLab has positively impacted my organization by being faster than other platforms and providing the best user interface and features."

"The scalability is good."

"I have found the most valuable features of GitLab are the GitClone, GitPush, GitPull, GitMatch, GitMit, GitCommit, and GitStatus."

"GitLab has better support, and its features are superior compared to Jenkins."

"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."

More GitLab pros

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."

"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization, and we can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications."

"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

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

"We'd always like to see better pricing on the product."

"For as long as I have used GitLab, I haven't encountered any major limitations. However, I think that perhaps the search functionality could be better."

"I would like to have some features to support peer review."

"Even if I say I want some improvement, they will say it is already planned in the first quarter, second quarter, or third quarter. That said, most everything is quite improved already, and they're improving even further still."

"GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient."

"There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files."

"Atlassian offers more products than GitLab. GitLab offers source control management, version control and collaboration between developers. Atlassian offers features on top of this as well as more integration points for developers."

More GitLab cons

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."

"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."

"The infrastructure is quite challenging."

"The network control and security policies must be improved."

"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."

"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."

"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using its free version, and we are evaluating its Premium version. Its Ultimate version is very expensive."

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

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

"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."

"The solution is based on a licensing model that includes technical support and is paid annually."

"My company uses the free version of GitLab, which is GitLab Community Edition. There is a licensed version also available for GitLab."

"The solution's pricing is acceptable."

"The open-source version is very good and the commercial version is reasonably priced."

More GitLab pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost is expensive."

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."

"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."

"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."

"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	43

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

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?

We are currently using general GitLab, not GitLab Premium.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitLab?

GitLab can be improved by being more responsive in the UI and offering better pricing for premium features, which would be useful for small startups. While GitLab's CI/CD is powerful, it is somewha...

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 4% of the time

TeamCity vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

Tekton vs GitLab

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

GitLab

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

Fuzzit

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

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

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

Broadcom

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

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

GitLab vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

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