GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub is the largest platform for hosting Git repositories and collaborating on code. It was founded in 2008 in San Francisco by Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner and Scott Chacon, and Microsoft bought it in 2018 for $7.5 billion. GitHub's Octoverse 2025 report counts more than 180 million developers and 630 million repositories. The core job is version control with pull requests and code review.

Around repositories GitHub adds Issues and Projects for planning, Actions for CI/CD with hosted runners, Codespaces for cloud dev environments and security tooling such as Dependabot, code scanning and secret scanning. Copilot provides AI code completion, chat and a coding agent that works from issues to pull requests. The Free plan includes unlimited public and private repositories with Actions minutes and Packages storage; Team and Enterprise add more minutes, protected branches, SAML SSO, audit logs and data residency. Copilot is billed separately, and GitHub Secret Protection and Code Security are paid add-ons for private code.

GitHub fits almost every software team. Costs climb with Actions minutes, Codespaces hours, Copilot usage and security add-ons. Its planning tools are lighter than Jira or Linear, which many teams keep alongside it, and GitLab is the main rival for a single DevSecOps app with strong self-managed options.

In August 2025 CEO Thomas Dohmke stepped down and GitHub moved into Microsoft's CoreAI group; Copilot now bills in AI credits. The pricing page lists Team and Enterprise prices for the first 12 months, so check renewal terms.

GitLab is a single-application DevSecOps platform covering source control, code review, CI/CD, security scanning, package registries, planning and deployment. The open-source project was started in 2011 by Dmitriy Zaporozhets, and he and Sid Sijbrandij founded the company in 2014. It has been listed on Nasdaq since 2021. Its core job is to take code from an issue to production in one tool, either on GitLab.com or on your own servers.

GitLab bundles Git repositories, merge requests, CI/CD with runners, container and package registries, SAST, dependency and secret scanning, issue boards and epics. The Duo Agent Platform adds AI agents for planning, security triage and code review, plus flows that fix failing pipelines, billed through usage-based GitLab Credits at $1 each. Free covers 5 users per private group, 400 compute minutes and 10 GiB of storage; Premium adds approvals and 10,000 minutes; Ultimate adds advanced security, compliance and 50,000 minutes.

GitLab fits engineering organizations that want one platform with a self-hosting option, especially in regulated industries. The interface is dense, Premium is expensive for small teams, and many security features need Ultimate. GitHub has the larger community and marketplace, Snyk is a deeper specialist for application security, and Jira or Linear are stronger for product planning than GitLab issues.

Premium costs $29 per user a month billed annually, and Premium and Ultimate currently include promotional GitLab Credits worth $12 and $24 per user a month. The 30-day Ultimate trial includes the Duo Agent Platform.