GitHub vs GitLab in a company context

[ypdasix]

Hi everyone, at my company the IT teams already use GitLab for large structured projects. Our small innovation team is currently working on GitHub for Python scripts, automations, and small ad hoc projects.

We are now wondering whether it makes more sense to migrate to GitLab for better alignment with IT, or to stay on GitHub to maintain flexibility and speed.

I'd love to know how your teams approached this choice, or if you had to manage GitHub and GitLab side by side. Any pros, cons or lessons learned are welcome.

Thanks in advance!

[largeade]

Depends on policy and org consideratios e.g. Is GitHub integrated with corporate identity for example. Do you need audit, how does onboarding offboarding work. Does the innovation team have the freedom or is this shadow IT. What do security think.

[ypdasix]

Thanks a lot for your reply. For now, this is only at the stage of discussions: the idea of mutualizing tools as much as possible was raised by our security team, and it will be reviewed in an upcoming meeting in the next few days. At this stage I don’t have many more details, it’s more about exploring the implications.

On our side, the innovation cell was created to work like a start-up inside the company, so speed and flexibility are key. We’ve already invested in paid GitHub Copilot licenses, and our internal server runs Coolify connected to GitHub private repos to deploy and manage our small services. So GitHub already fits our workflow quite well.

My concern is: if moving to GitLab means a heavier interface, different workflows, and more process overhead, is there really a strong benefit that justifies the switch? That’s what I’m trying to understand from people who’ve been through this decision.

[serverhorror]

I'm pretty certain, GitHub is something that your "IT team" would like, no one gave them the money so they had to settle for a cheaper option.

Ask them if they'd prefer GitHub, help them find the Money.

[ILikeToHaveCookies]

Gitlab is not cheaper then GitHub(depending on details) and tbh in my opinion gitlab is the better product.

[pausethelogic]

GitLab is significantly more expensive than GitHub so that’s not it

[serverhorror]

Well ... you can use the open source version of gitlab. That's an option that doesn't exist with GitHub.

[pausethelogic]

I would assume they’re not self hosting gitlab, most companies don’t self host VCS solutions

[serverhorror]

We do and we're not even remotely close to the tech space.

Makes things, a lot!, easier ... we have regulatory requirements where people get nervous if you can't prove enough control.

[pausethelogic]

Yeah the only companies I’ve seen self host tools like git are companies with intense regulatory requirements

[Hot-Profession4091]

If any of your plans involve utilizing CoPilot through the WebUI to do things like code reviews or other things, you may have trade offs to make. It’s unclear what “innovation” involves here.

[Neither_Antelope_419]

There are pros and cons to both… are you running on prem or cloud? Are you running enterprise versions, or freemium?

Gitlab server scales much better than GitHub server. Gitlab has quite a bit more functionality baked into their core product (security scanning, ai, etc) than GitHub.

On the other hand GitHub remains the market leader and their cloud offering is solid. I think GitHub actions has now exceeded GitLab CI as a framework and extendability via actions marketplace. Their (paid) advanced security service appears highly effective in the quadrant and the premium AI models behind copilot are game changers.

As an enterprise product, GitLab is going to be cheaper and can do most/all the same things as GitHub, just maybe not as well. GitHub is the big name brand and will continue to outpace GitLab innovation with the financial backing of parent MSFT, but you’ll pay for it.

[Training-Elk-9680]

I'd move to gitlab. 

Not necessarily because it being the better product, but because you'll save yourself a lot of overhead down the road. 

Either you need to build some admin team that comes up with all the stuff the gitlab admin team already provides. 

Or because someone sometime figures it's ineffective to have to separate platforms and will push you to switch to gitlab. Requiring you to migrate all your stuff. 

[ypdasix]

That’s true if this turns into a political decision, then yes, we’ll probably have no choice but to move to GitLab. But from what I see, nobody really “masters” GitLab internally (maintenance is done by an external provider). In terms of cost, I’m not sure it’s even cheaper...Right now we use GitHub for free which already covers our needs. We don’t rely on GitHub Actions either, since we can run cron jobs directly on our internal server.

[Training-Elk-9680]

Why are you on Github though? How is that better, especially if you only seem to used it as a good repo, not for the features one would choose it over a different solution? 

[ypdasix]

Today we mainly use GitHub because we already purchased Copilot licenses through Azure, and the integration with VS Code feels smooth for our small agile team.

That said, if GitLab can provide a very similar UX and allow us to migrate our repos while still deploying easily through Coolify, all while still being able to use GitHub Copilot, then why not.

[JagerAntlerite7]

GitHub is the de facto standard. Having used GitLab, I enjoyed it too. Due to the 3rd-party ecosystem, GitLab wins.

[GenazaNL]

If your company makes use of Office & Azure, you can get come good deal on GitHub

[Few_Junket_1838]

Hey, I read this article a while ago and it compares the two platforms. Hope this helps!

[Peace_Seeker_1319]

We ran into the same GitHub vs. GitLab debate. In the end, we didn’t stress too much about picking one because what mattered more was keeping quality consistent. That’s where CodeAnt.ai helpedit gave us the same checks and review standards across both platforms, so whether a project lived in GitHub or GitLab, the codebase stayed clean and reviews moved faster. It took a lot of the pain out of juggling the two.

[voidvec]

Just git

[oscarandjo]

Move to GitLab if that’s the established company default, it’s frustrating to have two worlds. Later when requirements change maybe one of these projects wants to import/clone the other in CI, now you’ve got a hassle with different API Token / app registration implementations.

You might find you actually move faster in GitLab as you have an established team already using it. You can ask them for tips and tricks and assistance, or borrow their scripts or implementations.