What is the difference between GitHub vs. GitLab vs Alternatives?
Posted by Al Sweigart in misc
This article and its content were written, reviewed, and verified by a human, Al Sweigart. In my research I found that most "GitHub vs GitLab" articles are AI slop containing false or outdated information. I wrote this article with links to actual documentation pages, and not just copying what every other article on this topic says. For those who have heard of this "Git stuff," here's a summary of the differences and details. My hot take: For the needs of most individual or small group users, they're basically the same. GitLab seems to be more oriented towards self-hosting and custom configuration. Wikipedia has an extensive comparison list of source code repo hosting servers.
GitHub, GitLab, and Alternatives
While Git is the version control software you install on your computer to create and manage Git repositories, there are several websites that can host your Git repos online (i.e., "in the cloud."). There are several popular Git servers that are free or have free-tier options:
- GitHub (bought and owned by Microsoft)
- GitLab (developed and owned by GitLab Inc.)
- GNU Savannah (developed and owned by the Free Software Foundation)
- Bitbucket (bought and owned by Atlassian)
- Gitea (fork of Gogs, crowdfunded)
- Codeberg (open source developed by German non-profit Codeberg e.V.)
- SourceForge (one of the most longstanding services, aimed at open source projects)
Azure Repos is also owned by Microsoft and is not free (you get $200 in credit for free to use in the first 30 days.)
These are "cloud hosted" servers; you sign up for an account and they run the online Git server for you. There is also "self-hosted" or "self-managed", where you run the Git server software on an online host yourself and manage/admin it yourself. GitHub-like servers on your own internet-connected servers. You have more control with self-hosting options, but you must pay for hosting and admin the server yourself. (If something happens, you need to fix it.) This article only discusses cloud hosted Git servers.
Summary of GitHub and GitLab
| Feature | GitHub | GitLab |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free and paid options | Free and paid options |
| Hosting | Cloud with optionally self-hosted GitHub Action runners | Cloud & self-hosting option |
| CI/CD | Yes, through GitHub Actions | Yes, through GitLab Runners |
| Permissions | Yes, with fine-grain permissions, roles, and "teams" | Yes, with fine-grained permissions, roles, and groups. |
| Project Management | Issue tracker/discussion forums/etc | Same |
| Self-Hosted Licensing | Proprietary | MIT-licensed community edition and proprietary enterprise edition |
What Reddit Says
There are several posts on the r/DevOps subreddit where folks discuss GitHub vs GitLab. Here are the ones best conversations I found:
- GitHub vs Gitlab (May 2023)
- Gitlab CI vs Jenkins vs GitHub Actions (Jan 2023)
- Full suite comparison: BitBucket vs Gitlab vs Github? (Aug 2021)
- What does GitLab offer that GitHub doesn't? (Jan 2021)
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