GitLab vs. GitHub – comparison

Nowadays GitLab and GitHub are the most popular git hosting services. And, there is no doubt that the question about their differences can arise. 

Being launched in 2004, GitHub has developed an incredibly big community, and GitLab, which was established in 2011 has already got 30 million users all over the world. These two competitors have a lot in common, like configuration, installation process or caching. On the other hand, differences make them interesting for the developers to compare. 

Management Strategy

Both these platforms provide customers with CI/CD management, though there is a slight difference. GitLab has a built-in Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery and GitHub permits its users to work with CI/CD tools which they want, but customers should integrate those tools by themselves. 

Fast or Reliable – you choose

When we think about comfortable work, we usually imagine that everything goes smoothly and fast. Being the best on the market, both these services provide these features, but GitLab can slightly slow down the process of testing. Why? Because there are more steps to be performed as the service permits the user to make multiple stable branches beyond the master. In its turn, GitHub allows the users to deploy and restore the old variation faster if a problem appears. It can be explained by the platform’s permission to merge the new branches with a master one. 

Backup Strategy

It is difficult to manage the code peacefully without an understanding of how it is protected. GitLab is a command-line utility and it runs on the same Linux server as the entire platform. GitHub gives the same opportunity, but it can be backed up to another separate host. Though, both platforms state that an alternative backup solution could be useful, for example, GitProtect.io – the most professional GitLab backup and GitHub backup and recovery software for a source code to be safe, accessible and recoverable.

Code navigation

When the code is written or is in the process of writing, it’s great when there is a possibility to navigate it. At this point, the git repository services have slight differences. GitLab needs SourceGraph integration to navigate the code while GitHub permits its customers to reach definitions and references for some identifiers fast only with the use of programming language-aware navigation. 

Looking at all their differences it is very difficult to say what is the best choice. Each IT team should select the service according to their needs and expectations of the code creation process.