Overview
GitLab began in 2011 as an open-source collaboration tool, was incorporated as a company in 2014 and listed on the Nasdaq Global Market in 2021 under the ticker GTLB; it is an all-remote company with more than 2,500 team members as of June 2026 and estimates over 50 million registered users[4]. Its product combines source control, CI/CD, package and container registries, security scanning, planning and AI features (GitLab Duo) in one application available as GitLab.com SaaS or self-managed[3].
The Free plan includes 400 compute minutes per month; Premium costs US$29 per user per month billed annually with 10,000 minutes; Ultimate is custom-priced with 50,000 minutes[3]. Premium and Ultimate currently include promotional AI credits of US$12 and US$24 per user per month, and additional GitLab Credits cost US$1 each at list price; extra compute minutes cost US$10 per 1,000 and storage US$5 per 10 GiB per month[3]. Self-managed prices mirror SaaS[3]. GitLab’s single-application design reduces integration work and suits regulated organisations that self-host, but Premium is several times the price of GitHub Team, and the most advanced security features sit in the custom-priced Ultimate tier.
What GitLab does
- Source control and merge requests
- Built-in CI/CD with 400-50,000 minutes
- Security scanning (Ultimate)
- GitLab Duo AI
- Self-managed or SaaS
- Enterprise Agile Planning add-on
- Pipelines defined in .gitlab-ci.yml
- GitLab-hosted and self-managed runners
GitLab pricing
Free: US$0, 400 compute minutes. Premium: US$29/user/month (annual), 10,000 minutes. Ultimate: custom, 50,000 minutes. Add-ons: compute US$10 per 1,000 minutes; storage US$5/10 GiB/month; GitLab Credits US$1 each; Enterprise Agile Planning US$15/user/month.
GitLab strengths and limitations
Strengths
- One application for the full lifecycle
- Self-managed option
- Strong built-in security on Ultimate
- Transparent add-on prices
- Code, CI/CD and security in one application
- Self-managed option for regulated environments
Limitations
- Premium more expensive than GitHub Team
- Ultimate is custom-priced
- Free plan has only 400 minutes
- Promotional AI credits time-limited
- Ultimate pricing is not published
- Free tier limited to 5 users per group
Appears in
GitLab alternatives and competitors
Alternatives to GitLab: companies ranked in the same lists.
OpenAI Whisper
Jira Service Management
Octopus Deploy
Microsoft Azure AI Speech
Argo CD
Harness
CircleCI
Jenkins
P4 Code Review- SmartBear Collaborator
SonarQube
Greptile
Is this your company?
Update the description, logo, image and link through the submission form. Editors review every change.