A Thorough Comparison of Capabilities and Tradeoffs
Have you ever wondered what the fundamental differences are between GitLab and GitHub? As a developer, choosing the right code hosting platform is vital – it will have cascading impacts on collaborationworkflows, tool integrations, and community engagement down the line. Both GitLab and GitHub have carved out leadership positions – but each serves slightly different needs.
This comprehensive, side-by-side guide will unpack their histories, features, pricing models, weaknesses and strengths. You‘ll also see usage example case studies and development community trends to inform your decision…
How Did GitLab and GitHub Evolve to Dominate Code Hosting?
Before analyzing tradeoffs, it‘s helpful to understand the divergent histories that led GitHub and GitLab to become category leaders…
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## Which Platform Has More Users and Traction?
Given GitHub came first, it continues holding the majority market share - but GitLab is gaining quickly over time. Here‘s how daily active users have trended across both platforms:
Early signs suggest enterprises are picking GitLab more for internal tools, whereas developers building their brands still prefer GitHub‘s public visibility.
## What Are the Core Similarities Between GitHub and GitLab?
Despite unique histories and audiences, GitHub and GitLab share underlying structural similarities:
- Both rely on Git version control for managing source code history. No surprises here!
- Each provides web access to Git repos with permissions, code reviews, wikis.
- They enable collaboration through issues, pull requests, notifications.
- Self-managed on-prem installations or cloud-hosted services.
So on a technical level, teams can accomplish similar workflows on GitHub and GitLab in a general sense. The approaches diverge when considering ecosystem, interfaces, integrations and capabilities offered out-of-the-box... Statistics sourced from DB-Engines community survey data from over 600 developers globally. Image created through Excel visualization.