GitLab vs. GitHub – a com­par­is­on of the two version control systems

GitLab and GitHub are version control systems for managing source code in software de­vel­op­ment. When working in a team, de­velopers can use these two platforms to edit source code, make changes, and perhaps most im­port­antly, keep track of all changes they have made. Every single change can be precisely tracked and undone if necessary.

As the names suggest, both GitLab and GitHub are based on the Git ver­sion­ing software. This software uses re­pos­it­or­ies into which users can upload source code and col­lect­ively edit it in a browser, in code editors, or in a terminal.

If you have no ex­per­i­ence with Git, we recommend our Git tutorial for a quick in­tro­duc­tion and an overview of the most important prin­ciples. If you want to dive deeper into GitLab, you can also take a look at our extensive GitLab tutorial.

Although the two platforms share the important sim­il­ar­ity of being based on Git, there are some key dif­fer­ences between GitLab and GitHub. For example, one of the most important factors is GitHub’s huge user base. The platform has gained near-monopoly status as the best-known version control system. It’s no co­in­cid­ence that GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018.

The size and market share of GitHub also has practical con­sequences. Thanks to GitHub’s huge pool of users, you stand a greater chance of finding teams for your own projects, es­pe­cially open-source projects. It’s also easier for other users to integrate re­pos­it­or­ies. Overall, more de­velopers use this platform and are con­tinu­ously expanding it. As a result, GitHub is con­sidered a more stable, more powerful platform.

Both GitLab and GitHub have a free version and an en­ter­prise version, which in turn are divided into several sub­scrip­tion models with different features.

In principle, both platforms can be installed on a private server. However, self-hosting is only possible with the paid en­ter­prise version of GitHub. On the other hand, the free community edition of GitLab also allows for self-hosting. The server stability of the hosted version of GitLab is generally slightly worse than that of GitHub, which is why in­stall­a­tion on a private server can make sense.

Due to the wide­spread pop­ular­ity of GitHub, the service is com­pat­ible with numerous ap­plic­a­tions that make teamwork easier, such as Docker, CI/CD tools, or project man­age­ment ap­plic­a­tions. This com­pat­ib­il­ity is es­pe­cially necessary when it comes to con­tinu­ous in­teg­ra­tion because GitHub does not have its own con­tinu­ous in­teg­ra­tion tools. This is where the GitLab tool has the edge, since it comes with free built-in con­tinu­ous in­teg­ra­tion func­tion­al­ity.

For a long time, the great advantage of GitLab was that any number of free re­pos­it­or­ies were available for users. GitHub took notice and now offers this feature as well. Nev­er­the­less, the free version of GitHub has more re­stric­tions.

For example, protected branches, meaning de­vel­op­ment branches that only selected users can access, can be used in both GitLab and GitHub. However, in GitHub, they can only be used in public re­pos­it­or­ies, whereas in GitLab this feature is also available for private re­pos­it­or­ies. GitHub is even more re­strict­ive and allows a maximum of three de­velopers per private re­pos­it­ory. If you col­lab­or­ate in larger teams, you have to switch to a sub­scrip­tion and use the En­ter­prise version.

GitHub generally offers slightly fewer user per­mis­sions: Role-based per­mis­sion man­age­ment is only possible in GitHub with a paid team sub­scrip­tion, whereas this option is a standard feature of GitLab. GitLab also offers a container registry where users can store the Docker images created with CI tools and manage them as part of the GitLab re­pos­it­ory.

Since GitHub and GitLab are both based on Git, you can migrate from one platform to the other without major problems. Re­pos­it­or­ies, wikis, pull requests, and issues are usually easy to import. However, there are some ter­min­o­logy dif­fer­ences between GitHub and GitLab, as the following table shows:

The term ‘re­pos­it­ory’ oc­ca­sion­ally causes confusion when switching platforms because many users use ‘re­pos­it­ory’ and ‘project’ as synonyms, even though in GitHub the re­pos­it­ory contains Git re­pos­it­or­ies and project assets. GitLab, therefore, calls this container a ‘project’ to emphasise that it contains all important project data.

With its tidy graphical user interface, GitLab seems somewhat clearer at first, which is why many users of the platform report that it’s easier and more intuitive to use. For example, issues in GitLab are not only displayed as a list, but they can also be organised and managed in a board view.

Another big advantage of GitLab over GitHub is that its user interface (UI) can be scaled and freely adjusted to the size of the screen, whereas GitHub is limited to a fixed size. As a result, GitLab is often a better al­tern­at­ive to GitHub for viewing on mobile devices.

Editing and creating code is a bit easier with GitLab because the tool offers an in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment (IDE). By contrast, GitHub only has a min­im­al­ist­ic text editor.

However, to be fair, we should note that these dif­fer­ences are not very sig­ni­fic­ant if you use the platforms on a desktop and integrate them into third-party editors or IDEs, since you won’t see much of the actual interface anyway. If you’ve never used either of these tools, both will require similar effort to learn.