GitHub vs. GitLab and other DevOps tools

More than 90% of the Fortune 100 use GitHub Enterprise

DevOps is just the beginning. From McKesson to Meta and Spotify to SAP, many of the world's biggest and most innovative companies are built on GitHub—the leading developer platform compared to alternative solutions.

Why teams choose GitHub

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Build on the most loved developer platform

Build what's next with the all-in-one solution that's beloved by developers. Go from ideation to planning, project management, security, automation and delivery with extensive native capabilities and a rich integration ecosystem.
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Scale faster with powerful CI/CD

Build your DevOps practice with native CI/CD that responds to any webhook. Bring your preferred tools seamlessly into your workflow with a rich ecosystem of integrations in the GitHub Marketplace—or build your own integrations with GitHub Actions.
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Stay secure at every step

Empower developers to fix vulnerabilities in minutes with the only community-driven, native application security testing solution on a platform designed for dynamic teams and regulated industries.
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Home to the world's largest open source registry

Accelerate your workflows and scale your business fast with access to millions of open source projects on GitHub, the largest source code host.
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What our customers are saying

GitHub keeps us up to speed with the industry's best tools. We want new hires to know GitHub is in our toolchain—it makes them excited to join us.
American Airlines
Head of Emerging TechAmerican Airlines
It's like night and day. It's the collaboration, it's the sharing, it's the community. It's all because of GitHub.
Autodesk
Director of Build PlatformAutodesk
One of the big benefits of using GitHub for CI/CD and security automation is that we don't have to build, deploy, or maintain additional tools.
mercari logo
Software EngineerMercari
We're a developer-first organization and we live and breathe GitHub. It's not just a developer platform for us.
Hashicorp
Chief Security OfficerHashicorp

How GitHub compares to other DevOps platforms

There are dozens of alternative DevOps tools from best-in-breed point solutions to full platforms. So how does GitHub compare? There are plenty of analyst reports that answer that question--but here's an overview to help you get started.

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GitHub vs. GitLab for DevOps

Use case

GitHub

GitLab

Desktop and Mobile Support, CLI

GitLab

Third-party apps with limited capabilities.

Planning, tracking, and project management

GitLab

Comparable native capabilities

Collaboration

GitLab

Comparable native capabilities

Application security

GitLab

Core capabilities based on embedded open source projects and integrations with other open source solutions.

Automation & CI/CD

GitLab

Comparable native capabilities

Innovative coding capabilities

GitLab

Third-party integrations

Platform security

GitLab

Comparable native capabilities

Certifications:

  • ISO 27001

  • SOC 2 Type 2 Report: Security and Confidentiality Criteria

  • SOC 3 Report: Security and Confidentiality Criteria

  • ISO/IEC 20243-1:2018 Self Assessment

  • CSA-Star

  • PCI DSS SAQ-A Self-Assessment

Scalability

GitLab

Comparable native capabilities

Claims estimated 30 million users including estimated user counts from self-managed deployments.

Uptime SLA is not available.

* This is a biased overview of capabilities by use case, based on publicly available information as of 2022-05-16.

GitHub vs. Bitbucket for Devops

Use case

GitHub

Bitbucket

Desktop and Mobile Support, CLI

Bitbucket

Third-party apps with limited capabilities.

Planning, tracking, and project management

Bitbucket

Very limited native core capabilities

Requires Atlassian's Jira (a separate product) for planning and tracking capabilities.

Collaboration

Bitbucket

Comparable native capabilities

Application security

Bitbucket

Third-party integrations with commercial products and open source solutions.

Automation & CI/CD

Bitbucket

Comparable native capabilities

Only supports 86 integrations as of 2022-05-16.

Innovative coding capabilities

Bitbucket

Third-party integrations

Platform security

Bitbucket

Comparable native capabilities

Certifications:

  • GDPR Compliant

  • ISO 27001:2013

  • SOC 2

  • SOC 3

  • PCI DSS Compliant

Scalability

Bitbucket

No public information on total number of registered users. The last reported number was 10 million registered users in 2019. Uptime SLA is not available.

** This is a biased overview of capabilities by use case, based on publicly available information as of 2022-05-16.

GitHub vs. Jenkins for CI/CD

Use case

GitHub

Jenkins

Automation & CI/CD

Jenkins

Comparable native capabilities

1,800+ community contributed Jenkins plugins in Jenkins Plugin Marketplace.

Deployment models

Jenkins

Self-hosted only CloudBees is the cloud alternative

*** This is a biased overview of capabilities by use case, based on publicly available information as of 2022-05-16.

Frequently asked questions

What are some quick facts about GitHub Enterprise Cloud?

GitHub Enterprise Cloud offers a cloud-hosted enterprise product plan (SaaS) for large businesses and teams who need a complete DevSecOps solution. It provides tools for greater management of an organization's resources using sophisticated security and administrative features, for example through authentication with SAML single sign-on. GitHub Enterprise Cloud includes support for 50,000 minutes of GitHub Actions runtime for CI/CD workflows and 50GB of storage for shared components and containers. You can learn more about GitHub Enterprise Cloud in our documentation or product page.

How rich is GitHub’s documentation and where can I find it?

GitHub offers thorough documentation around all of its products with detailed how-to guides that walk teams, developers, and administrators through maximizing their investment with GitHub Enterprise. You can find GitHub’s documentation at docs.github.com, which offers a centralized place to find the latest information about GitHub’s products, how to use them, and how to get help. This documentation is kept up-to-date by our documentation teams partnering closely with engineering, our product teams, and our outside community via community contributions.

How do I migrate to GitHub Enterprise Cloud?

If you’re making the move to GitHub, we know you’ll have data you want to bring with you so your team can hit the ground running quickly. We know that fear of migration can be a big barrier to switching to GitHub, which is why we’re working hard to make moving quick, low cost and painless. 

GitHub Enterprise Importer is our tried and tested migration tool, used by thousands of GitHub customers to migrate more than 690,000 repositories to GitHub Enterprise Cloud. You can migrate on your own terms with free, self-service migrations from GitHub Enterprise Server, Bitbucket Server, Bitbucket Data Center and Azure DevOps.  

If you’re moving from another tool or you’re looking to adopt GitHub Enterprise Server, there are options for you. For more details, and to learn about our tools for planning your migration and moving large numbers of repositories, check out: https://resources.github.com/migrations/

How can I migrate teams from personal GitHub accounts to my organization account?

GitHub offers a simple way to turn personal accounts into organization accounts and migrate teams from personal accounts into organization accounts, too. You can find a full guide on how to do this in our documentation.

Does GitHub offer project planning and source code management in one place?

GitHub offers a complete cloud-hosted developer platform, which includes project planning, source code management, CI/CD, automation, application security and more. All of these features and capabilities are centralized within the core platform making it simple to plan projects, assign tasks, track work, and deploy code from one interface. GitHub’s project planning solution also integrates with task management and forum boards to track decision making trees, conversations, and project statuses. Learn more about project planning with GitHub Issues and how it ties into the everyday developer platform to increase the speed at which you can build, deploy, and scale solutions.

Does GitHub offer pre-built automation and CI/CD workflow templates?

GitHub offers a number of pre-built and community-developed automation workflow templates that enable organizations to build powerful CI/CD pipelines, enforce environmental policies, and more. These workflow templates are designed to meet the needs of leading teams and companies and feature a sizable integration ecosystem. You can find more than 12,000 pre-built automation workflows in the GitHub Marketplace, which contains community-driven and tested automations for security, CI/CD, development workflows, platform integrations, and more. You can also learn more about how automation and CI/CD work on GitHub in our documentation.

Can I use GitHub tools to manage, build, and deploy software to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, a cloud provider of my choice, or my on-site servers?

GitHub offers integrations with AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and other leading cloud providers through the GitHub Marketplace that make it simple to manage, build, and deploy cloud-native applications. GitHub also provides a number of pre-built and customizable CI/CD and automated workflows to manage, provision, and orchestrate cloud computing resources with GitHub Actions.

What is the difference between GitHub and GitLab?

Trying to choose between GitHub vs. GitLab for DevOps? The short answer: It depends on your current business needs and your growth plans. GitHub and GitLab are both mature, cloud-based SaaS platforms that offer native capabilities and integrations with third-party tools. While GitLab has their roots and the majority of their business in on-premises environments, they also have a relatively small cloud offering. GitHub is the home of open source and has been a cloud-native solution since their inception. GitHub also offers on-premises environments. Before making a decision on GitHub vs. GitLab, you’ll likely want to conduct your own research and test each solution.

What is the difference between GitHub and Bitbucket?

Making a decision between GitHub vs. Bitbucket to scale your DevOps practice? The answer depends on what you’re looking to accomplish and your organizational goals. GitHub and Atlassian Bitbucket are both mature platforms with native capabilities and third-party integrations. GitHub offers both a cloud-hosted SaaS model and a self-managed deployment model. In contrast, Bitbucket only offers a self-hosted solution for 500 seats or more with recurring license and support fees and otherwise promotes their cloud-hosted SaaS solution after making an end-of-life announcement for their on-premise Server product).

What is the difference between GitHub and Jenkins for CI/CD?

Trying to decide whether to use GitHub Actions vs. Jenkins? If you’re looking for a cloud-hosted CI/CD solution, GitHub Actions bring extensive and platform-native capabilities to the GitHub platform. Plus, it’s included in GitHub Enterprise. You can also look at CloudBees, which is the commercial variant of Jenkins and fully integrates into the GitHub experience. But where GitHub offers a complete DevOps and DevSecOps platform, Jenkins and its CloudBees commercial solution focus only on automation and CI/CD capabilities.

What is the difference between Git and GitHub?

Trying to understand the difference between Git vs. GitHub? It helps to understand what each solution is. Let’s start with Git: Originally developed in 2005 by Linux inventor Linus Torvalds, Git is a locally installed version control system used to track file changes in development workflows. Its primary purpose is to help developers coordinate work and track changes to source code over time. You can learn more about Git on Git-guides. In contrast, GitHub offers an end-to-end DevOps platform with cloud-hosted Git services—i.e., source code management (SCM) and versioning control. GitHub also includes project management, CI/CD, automation, enterprise-grade security scanning, and more to serve all software development needs.

Migrations made easy

Moving to GitHub Enterprise Cloud is simpler than you think with self-serve migrations from leading developer tools.

Plan your migration