Head to head
GitLab CI/CD vs GitHub Actions
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
60/100 | 70/100Higher score | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #2 | #1 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 86 | 92 |
| AI Authority | 59 | 68 |
| Web Authority | 21 | 44 |
| Expert Assessment | 62 | 64 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | $29 per user/month, billed annually (Premium) · free tier: Free at $0/user/month, no credit card required: 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes/month, SCM and CI/CD, 10 GiB adjustable storage, Static Application Security Testing; AI features require the GitLab Credits add-on | Team $4 USD per user/month for the first 12 months (3,000 CI/CD minutes/month, 2GB Packages storage, web-based support) · free tier: Free plan $0/month forever: unlimited public/private repositories, 2,000 CI/CD minutes/month (free for public repositories), 500MB Packages storage, community forum support; separate 30-day trial covering GitHub Enterprise, Copilot and Advanced Security |
| Pricing model | Subscription (per user/month, annual) with credit and usage-based add-ons | Subscription with bundled allowance plus usage-based metered overage |
| Best for | Engineering organisations that want a single vendor for source control, CI/CD, security scanning and planning, especially those with data-residency or air-gap needs, those willing to run their own runners, and qualifying OSS, education or startup projects eligible for free Ultimate. | Open-source projects and small-to-mid teams already standardised on GitHub.com running mostly Linux builds near their included minute allowance, who value one control plane for code, review, packages, scanning and CI and can absorb an occasional multi-hour CI stall. |
| Avoid if | You are a small team without seasoned DevOps staff, need more than 5 free users, want a lightweight CI runner bolted onto an existing stack, require month-to-month or mixed-tier licensing, run heavy CI on GitLab-hosted runners and cannot tolerate hard pipeline stops, or need a firm Ultimate budget before a sales cycle. | You need CI to survive independently of your SCM or cannot tolerate ten-plus hours of pipeline downtime, you run heavy macOS/iOS build matrices where round-up billing at $0.077–$0.102 per minute bites, you are a mid-sized team whose only requirement is SSO and audit logging, or you need a firm three-year TCO today. |
| Markets | SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, Public Sector, Open Source, Education, Startups | SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, Open Source / Individual Developers |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.