GitLab is a DevOps platform that covers the entire software development lifecycle in a single application. Git hosting, CI/CD pipelines, issue tracking, container registry, security scanning — it's all built in. The main appeal is not needing to stitch together separate tools for each part of the workflow.
GitLab's version control is solid and fully featured. Merge requests (the equivalent of GitHub's pull requests) support inline review comments, approval rules, and protected branches. You can require a minimum number of approvals, enforce passing pipelines before merging, and set up code owners for different parts of the codebase.
GitLab CI is one of the strongest parts of the platform. Pipelines are defined in a .gitlab-ci.yml file and can span multiple stages — build, test, deploy — with fine-grained control over when jobs run and what they depend on. Runners can be shared across your organisation or self-hosted on your own infrastructure, which is useful if you need builds to run on specific hardware or inside a private network.
One of the main reasons teams choose GitLab over GitHub is the ability to run it on your own servers. GitLab Community Edition is open source and free to self-host. This matters for organisations with data residency requirements or those that can't put source code on a third-party platform. The self-hosted installation is well documented and widely used.
GitLab has a free tier on gitlab.com and a free Community Edition for self-hosting. Paid tiers add advanced security features, compliance tools, and enterprise controls. The free tier is reasonably capable for small teams.
Share your experience to help others decide.
Be the first to review
Share your experience to help others.
Tags
© Dev tools 2026. All rights reserved