GitHub or GitLab, which one to choose?

Hello everyone!

hope you all are doing well. Today we will be discussing about key differences between GitHub and GitLab and which one can be better for you. So, without any delay, let’s great straight to business. Firstly let us understand what is GitHub and Gitlab. It offers the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git, plus its own features. It provides access control and several collaboration features such as bug tracking , feature requests, task management, and wikis for every project. In short, GitHub is a website which allows you to easily host, review and manage your code online in a secure environment and share it with the world or the people you want to. It is a subsidiary under Microsoft since 2018. It was founded on February 8, 2008 (as Logical Awesome LLC).

GitHub logo

According to GitHub’s website, there are 50 million developers on it’s platform. Here are some facts about GitHub:

1. GitHub is a home to over 27 million strong Developer community.
2. GitHub has more than 80 million projects. It is the largest code repository in the world that allows users to develop, share, and contribute to open source projects.
3. It is hosts projects in over 300 programming languages.
4. It is mostly used for open source projects.

Url: https://github.com/

Now, let’s talk about GitLab; GitLab is a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that provides a Git-repository manager providing wiki, issue-tracking and continuous integration/continuous deployment pipeline features, using an open-source license, developed by GitLab Inc. In other words it is web-based Git repository manager developed by GitLab Inc. for modern software development projects. It is similar to GitHub in many ways. GitLab was launched in 2011. It became one of the fastest growing software companies in the world in 2018.

GitLab logo

Some facts about GitLab:

1. It is used by more than 100,000 organisations in the world which includes Sony, IBM, Alibaba, NASA, O’Reilly Media, SpaceX, CERN, and more.
2. It comes with additional features such as easy import from other popular Git repositories like GitHub, Google Code, Bitbucket, etc.
3. GitLab provides project management tools such as Issue Tracker, Group Milestones, Issue Boards, Roadmaps, Time Tracking, and more to streamline your collaborative works for the complete software development lifecycle.
4. GitLab is used for both open source projects and closed source projects.

Url: https://about.gitlab.com/

This was a simple comparison between GitHub and GitLab, now let’s talk about the similarities among them. Note that similarities will be discussed in terms of work environment, deployment and efficiency.

Key similarities:

1. Both GitLab and GitHub offer issue tracking capabilities that enable status changes and the ability to assign owners to each issue. Additionally, bug reports can be sent instantly to both GitLab and GitHub.
2. Both of them allows a user to host a static website with the security of GitHub or GitLab.
3. Both have a wide range of third party integrations available to strengthen workflows and boost productivity. GitHub has a marketplace of third party integrations for specialized tools and applications. GitLab offers numerous integrations for development and DevOps teams.
4. GitHub and GitLab are capable of reverting commits or a merge request.
5. Both platforms allow maintainers to collaborate on a source branch [Main/Native branch] and edit into a fork.
6. Both of the services keep a separate system for documentation that is called Wiki and is built into each project as a separate Git repository.
7. GitLab and GitHub offer enterprise-level capabilities for development teams and organisations. Where as GitLab is more enterprise level service, both of them seems to work pretty well.
8. On both platforms, developers can add a description to issues or merge requests.
9. Both of them provides customer case studies which tells us what enterprises thinks about their services and also help a user to choose the best plan according to his/her needs.

Key differences between GitHub and GitLab:

1. Private repo = money. GitLab offers you free private repositories for open source projects where as GitHub does not.
2. GitHub is more popular than GitLab within the Developer community.
3. In GitHub, organisation owners/teams can add repositories as well as change one’s read, write, and admin access to those repositories. You can also invite users to collaborate on your personal repository as collaborators. In GitLab, users have different access levels in a group or project based on their respective roles. The GitLab administrators receive all permissions.
4. GitLab’s Confidential Issues module creates confidential issues that are visible only to project members with Reporter access level or above.
5. Unlike GitHub, GitLab offers Burndown Charts as part of milestones that allow developers to track progress during rush or while working on new software versions.
6. GitLab collects and displays performance metrics for applications to determine the impact of a merge and monitor production systems.
7. GitLab offers you free 30 days access to their premium services without any card details.
8. GitLab has better audit management than GitHub.
9. GitLab has its own continuous integration and continuous delivery by default built-in so that users don’t have to install it separately.
10. GitHub does not come with a built-in deployment platform and requires a third party integration with an external application to deploy applications. On the other hand, GitLab use Kubernetes for a seamless distribution/implementation experience.

Note:

1. GitHub offers paid plans to host private repositories where as GitLab offers private repositories for open source projects. That means if you upload a code on GitHub from a free account, it is open source where as it is not the case with GitLab.
2. At the end of the day, it’s all upon you what to choose. Requirement of other may not be a requirement for you.

Resources:

1. GitHub pricing is available here at: https://github.com/pricing
2. GitLab pricing is available here at: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/
3. To check more detailed comparison here: https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html

4. GitLab free 30 days trial is available at: https://about.gitlab.com/free-trial/

5. GitHub customer stories are available at: https://github.com/customer-stories?type=enterprise

6. GitLab customer stories are available at: https://about.gitlab.com/customers/

So, this is the end of my blog where i differentiated between GitHub and GitLab. Stays tuned for more blogs and stay safe and happy.