GitLab vs. Google Kubernetes Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GitLab
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
GitLab is an intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps, where software teams enable AI at every stage of the software lifecycle to ship faster. The platform enables teams to automate repetitive tasks across planning, building, securing, testing, deploying, and maintaining software.
$0
Google Kubernetes Engine
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Google Kubernetes Engine supplies containerized application management powered by Kubernetes which includes Google Cloud services including load balancing, automatic scaling and upgrade, and other Google Cloud services.
$0
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Pricing
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Editions & Modules
GitLab Free (self-managed)
$0
GitLab Free
$0
GitLab Premium
$29
per month per user
GitLab Premium (self-managed)
$29
per month per user
GitLab Ultimate
Contact Sales
GitLab Ultimate (self-managed)
Contact Sales
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0000438
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0000548
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0000548
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0014767
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0039380
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0049225
GKE Autopilot Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0133
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0.02
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0356000
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0445
vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Standard Mode
$0.10
per hour
Cluster Management
$0.10
per cluster per hour
Cluster Management
$74.40 monthly credit
per month per hour
Standard Mode - Free Version
Free
per hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsGitLab Credits enable flexible, consumption-based access to agentic AI capabilities in the GitLab platform, allowing you to scale AI adoption at your own pace while maintaining cost predictability. Powered by Duo Agent Platform, GitLab’s agentic AI capabilities help software teams to collaborate at AI speed, without compromising quality and enterprise security. If usage exceeds monthly allocations and overage terms are accepted, automated on-demand billing activates without service interruption, so your developers never lose access to AI capabilities they need. Real-time dashboards provide transparency into AI consumption patterns. Software teams can see usage across users, projects, and groups with granular attribution for cost allocation. Automated threshold alerts facilitate proactive planning. Advanced analytics deliver trending, forecasting, and FinOps integration.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Considered Both Products
GitLab
Chose GitLab
GitLab is a cost effective alternative to names like GitHub and others. It provides easy to use interface that is not dissimilar from GitHub and Atlassian Bitbucket. Where GitLab really shines is in its simplicity and ease of use. It's very intuitive and effectively allows a …
Chose GitLab
It is easy to use , devsecops/ dataops / gitops implementation is quite easy and straightforward compared to other tools which we have tested , it provides seamless integration with tools like dbt , talend , snowflake , collibra and python. Merge issues as well as pipeline …
Chose GitLab
Personally I like reviewing on GitLab better than GitHub, but it's not a huge difference.
Chose GitLab
I liked GitLab better than Beanstalk. GitLab had a free option, which Beanstalk did not at the time. From what I have used of Bitbucket, I probably like it better than GitLab, specifically I like the design better. Doing things in Bitbucket seemed a bit slower to me though. Now …
Chose GitLab
GitLab is widely used throughout the developer community and provides all the required features industry wide. Many of the paid features help the team a lot to achieve efficient source code management. Many features like vulnerability management and AI chat while code review in …
Chose GitLab
Gitlab is an industry standard tool for version controlling of the source code with multiple features used by the developers to maintain efficient development process and scalable services integration on the larger code bases. Multiple tools like AI code review helps the …
Chose GitLab
GitLab is an industry standard software and provides alot of features helpful for the developers with a suitable price point. It has most of the features that are provided and are useful. Team management and security for the source code and restrictions helps achieve all the …
Chose GitLab
Why we chose GitLab: we started long ago with free access and it was always good enough, so we never bothered to switch.
Chose GitLab
GitLab is an all-in-one Git and CI/CD platform that also offers generous credits in its free plan. It allows both private and public projects. The pipelines can be fully defined in YAML files put under version control.
Chose GitLab
GitLab is superior to beanstalk but still lacking in some areas in comparison to newer features to Github. However, it's enterprise based approach is very attractive to many of our top tier clients making it and effective solution for us within their organizations. It's well …
Chose GitLab
We have recently migrated from Bamboo to GitLab across our enterprise as part of our tech modernization roadmap. GitLab provides a all-in-one platform for integrated code management. The only advantage that Bamboo had over GitLab was the integration with JIRA. The streamlined …
Chose GitLab
In our case, we opted for an open source solution and complete control of information, meaning we kept critical information and company developments in-house.
Chose GitLab
GitLab has all the features at one place and also provides plenty of customization for runners
Chose GitLab
As mentioned earlier, the features like chart visualization sets it apart from the others. Other than that, GitLab is open source while other are not and comparatively more secure that its other counterparts. Also, GitLab supports adding other types of attachments which is not …
Chose GitLab
When i was using the other platform, Some time i face down time, But GitLabs its not happening for single time. GitLab is having easy user interference as compared to other platforms. Pull Request, Code review, Issue tracking, Merging, Access control and User Roles is having a …
Chose GitLab
GitLab is miles ahead of the competition. In so many words, having a simple UI with robust security and the ability to conduct Git actions takes the cake. The competitions like to say they can do these things easily but their products are more confusing and hard to use.
Chose GitLab
Because it has the latest features, it is perfect for collaboration, has the best integrations available, and is super secure. Basically, it covers all my needs and the companies. I love its pipelines because of its secrets and agents. I also love that you can manage the …
Chose GitLab
GitLab allows a self-hosted version that is easy to setup and configure. It is also open-source as compared to GitHub. The integrated CI/CD tools is a plus, since we do not have to worry about those tools, unlike Github. The All-in-one solution of GitLab made sense for our …
Chose GitLab
Gitlab offers the best support for CI/CD pipelines and the highest degree of customisation for workflows, permissions, and integrations. The integration of BitBucket with JIRA is better than GitLab but CI/CD features are limited in comparison. GitLab's built-in Container …
Chose GitLab
Gitlab provides basic functionality like any other git tool. Some features of push and pull requests , clone and merge is handled equally well. It lacks in AI features which are there in GitHub and setup processes are difficult. Cost difference is the only concern while …
Chose GitLab
GitHub is an inferior product from most points of view. We had to use it and the teams finds no positives about it. Everything is a downgrade from our previous GitLab solution.

GitLab CI\CD is vastly superior to workflows, for example doing a manual node is just "when : manual" …
Chose GitLab
It's much simpler than the competitors. The one important feature Gitlab stand out is the CI/CD pipeline. GitHub required integration with external CI tools but Gitlab has this feature built-in. Compare to Jenkins and Teamcity, It's easy to use without any additional Plugins. …
Chose GitLab
Gitlab seems more cutting-edge than GitHub; however, its AI tools are not yet as mature as those of CoPilot. It feels like the next-generation product, so as we selected a tool for our startup, we decided to invest in the disruptor in the space. While there are fewer …
Chose GitLab
I tried Github in the past, and it was really similar as GitLab. But we prefer use GitLab for the cicd part, easier to handle
Google Kubernetes Engine
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
We have a CICD pipeline, which we wrote using the Gitlab CI file. This is connected directly to our GKE cluster. So, any change in our code will directly start the CICD pipeline. The pipeline first tests the deployment on testing environments. We are also using Helm charts to …
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
We had to move several products to Google Cloud, and the Google Kubernetes Engine was the option recommended to us, so we investigated it and ran with it. Back then (2019), we were not aware of Cloud Run-provisioned K8s clusters, so our other option was a completely …
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
GKE spins up new nodes a LOT faster than AKS. GKE's auto scaler runs a lot smoother than AKS. GKE has a lot more Kubernetes features baked in natively.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
In comparison to functionality with EKS and AKS, it has a better upgrade path and the price is lower. Not sure why flannel is the primary overlay network provider but network policies are supported as well.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine has better upgrades and auto-scale management. Google Kubernetes Engine is also the cheapest option for managed Kubernetes, and Google is the principal contributor to the Kubernetes project.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
Our organization went with Google's Kubernetes Engine because we are already significantly invested in the Google Cloud Platform. In our evaluation of Amazon's Elastic Kubernetes Service we were turned off by recent concerns about Amazon becoming overly dominant in the cloud …
Features
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
GitLab
-
Ratings
Google Kubernetes Engine
8.6
Ratings
5% above category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Small Businesses
GitGuardian
GitGuardian
Score 9.0 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Veracode
Veracode
Score 8.7 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Veracode
Veracode
Score 8.7 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GitLabGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well-suited for any project that needs VCS. It's an excellent choice for teams that might be remote or have to collaborate across teams. Plenty of features allow for async working. With its dashboards and reporting features, it is also suitable for nontechnical PMs or stakeholders. It allows for very bespoke customization and can most often do much more than you need it to.
Read full review
Google Kubernetes Engine is well suited for dynamic and large workloads since it can scale up with usage. It is easily configurable, which allows for flexibility. User interface is simple to navigate, which reduces roadblocks for a team with people unfamiliar with Kubernetes. Great if you are already using other GCP services as it integrates well with that.
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Pros
  • GitLab excels in managing code versions, allowing easy tracking of changes, branch management, and merging contributions.
  • It helps maintain code stability and reliability, saving time and effort in the development or research workflow.
  • Powerful code review features, enabling collaboration and feedback among team members.
  • Robust project management features, including issue tracking, kanban boards, and milestones.
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  • Deployment of a new GKE cluster is really fast in comparison to other cloud providers.
  • GCP is ahead other vendors and always provide the most up to date Kubernetes version.
  • GKE automation for master upgrade and the worker nodes pool works really well.
Read full review
Cons
  • CI variables management is sometimes hard to use, for example, with File type variables. The scope of each variable is also hard to guess.
  • Access Token: there are too many types (Personal, Project, global..), and it is hard to identify the scope and where it comes from once created.
  • Runners: auto-scaled runners are for the moment hard to put in place, and monitoring is not easy.
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  • Not as intuitive as it could be
  • Documentation could be better, especially for people using other Google Cloud tools
  • Not the preferred Kubernetes Engine for many apps
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Likelihood to Renew
I really feel the platform has matured quite faster than others, and it is always at the top of its game compared to the different vendors like GitHub, Azure pipelines, CircleCI, Travis, Jenkins. Since it provides, agents, CI/CD, repository hosting, Secrets management, user management, and Single Sign on; among other features
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No answers on this topic
Usability
I find it easy to use, I haven't had to do the integration work, so that's why it is a 9/10, cause I can't speak to how easy that part was or the initial set up, but day to day use is great!
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It's a great product if you learn it. It has flexibility and is very strong. Autoscaling and Resource management make running huge applications a breeze. Using Helm with Kubernetes and Terraform for infrastructure creation can totally automate your CICD pipeline. You also get easy access to CUDA cores for machine learning.
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Reliability and Availability
I've never had experienced outages from GItlab itself, but regarding the code I have deployed to Gitlab, the history helps a lot to trace the cause of the issue or performing a rollback to go back to a working version
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No answers on this topic
Performance
GItlab reponsiveness is amazing, has never left me IDLE. I've never had issues even with complex projects. I have not experienced any issues when integrating it with agents for example or SSO
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
At this point, I do not have much experience with Gitlab support as I have never had to engage them. They have documentation that is helpful, not quite as extensive as other documentation, but helpful nonetheless. They also seem to be relatively responsive on social media platforms (twitter) and really thrived when GitHub was acquired by Microsoft
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Google support is excellent and helpful, but the first answer is always so bureaucratic no matter how many logs, evidence, and information you sent.
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Alternatives Considered
GitHub is an inferior product from most points of view. We had to use it and the teams finds no positives about it. Everything is a downgrade from our previous GitLab solution. GitLab CI\CD is vastly superior to workflows, for example doing a manual node is just "when : manual" in GitLab while you have to do clickops in GitHub to achieve the same. No overview of code in branches is a minus when we tried to figure out what our colleagues are trying to merge as it looked off.
Read full review
We had to move several products to Google Cloud, and the Google Kubernetes Engine was the option recommended to us, so we investigated it and ran with it. Back then (2019), we were not aware of Cloud Run-provisioned K8s clusters, so our other option was a completely self-managed K8s cluster on Compute Engine VMs, which we did not have the knowledge of and capacity to handle.
Read full review
Scalability
I think is very well designed, and like any VCS it works as intended
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • GitLab cut down our spent on container, package and infrastructure registry
  • Best thing is we can now have everything in single platform which cost effective too
  • Quality of support is really good and they do have emergency support team as well which is great
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  • Compared to other big K8s providers it has the best price/performance factors.
  • Upgrade process from stable to regular versions
  • Old stable releases: 1.15/1.16 should be in a stable branch.
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ScreenShots

GitLab Screenshots

Screenshot of What is Intelligent Orchestration for DevSecOps?Screenshot of an overview of GitLab Duo Agent PlatformScreenshot of a new agent creation screen