GitLab

GitLab has a free tier (GitLab Free) with unlimited public and private repositories, 5GB storage, and 400 CI/CD minutes/month. The GitLab for Startups deal provides GitLab Ultimate free for 12 months — a $99/user/month plan that includes advanced security scanning, feature flags, compliance management, and 50,000 CI/CD minutes/month. This is one of the most valuable startup deals available for engineering teams in 2026.

GitLab is a single application covering the entire DevSecOps lifecycle — source control, CI/CD, security scanning, container registry, and deployment management are all built in. GitHub assembles these capabilities from multiple services (GitHub Actions, GitHub Advanced Security, GitHub Packages, third-party tools). GitLab wins for all-in-one depth and self-hosting; GitHub wins for developer ecosystem size, Copilot AI, and familiarity.

Yes — GitLab Community Edition (CE) is free to self-host on any infrastructure. GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE) adds the advanced features in the startup deal and is available on a commercial license after the free period. For most startups, GitLab.com (SaaS) is the right starting point — self-hosting adds infrastructure management overhead that isn't worth it at early stage unless data residency is required.

Both are YAML-based pipeline systems. GitLab CI has more mature multi-stage pipeline features, native DAG (non-linear) execution, built-in environment management, and more flexible parallel job configuration. GitHub Actions has a larger marketplace (20,000+ actions vs GitLab's smaller catalog) and simpler syntax for common workflows. For complex pipeline architectures, GitLab CI is generally more powerful; for simple pipelines, both are equivalent.

GitLab Ultimate includes: SAST (static analysis of source code for vulnerabilities), DAST (dynamic testing of running applications), Dependency Scanning (checking third-party packages against known CVE databases), Secret Detection (finding accidentally committed passwords and API keys), Container Scanning (Docker image vulnerability analysis), and License Compliance (checking open-source license compatibility). All results appear in MR views and the Security Dashboard.

Yes — GitLab includes a built-in container registry on all plans. You can push Docker images from GitLab CI and pull them in your deployment workflows without configuring Docker Hub or AWS ECR separately. The container registry is integrated with GitLab's access controls — repository members with the appropriate role can push and pull images automatically.