Choosing a CI/CD platform is a significant decision that affects daily development workflows. GitHub Actions and GitLab CI are the two leading integrated options—CI/CD built directly into your source code management platform.
Both are capable. Both can build, test, and deploy your applications. The choice often comes down to which platform you’re already using for source control, but there are real differences worth understanding.
The Quick Summary
GitHub Actions is tightly integrated with GitHub, has a massive marketplace of community actions, and uses a YAML-based workflow syntax that’s approachable for newcomers. It’s the natural choice for teams already on GitHub.
GitLab CI is part of GitLab’s all-in-one DevOps platform, offers more built-in features out of the box, and uses a pipeline-focused model that some teams find more intuitive for complex workflows. It’s the natural choice for teams using GitLab.
The honest answer: If you’re choosing primarily based on CI/CD capabilities, either platform will serve you well. The broader question—GitHub versus GitLab as your development platform—is often more important than the CI/CD feature comparison.
GitHub Actions Strengths
Marketplace and Ecosystem
GitHub Actions’ marketplace contains thousands of pre-built actions for common tasks. Need to deploy to AWS? There’s an official action. Set up a specific language runtime? Multiple options exist. Send notifications, run security scans, publish packages—the community has built actions for almost everything.
This ecosystem reduces the work of building pipelines. Common patterns become one-line references rather than custom scripts. The marketplace makes getting started fast and reduces ongoing maintenance as the community maintains popular actions.
Approachability
GitHub Actions’ workflow syntax is relatively easy to understand. Jobs, steps, triggers—the concepts map to intuitive mental models. Teams new to CI/CD can write working workflows quickly, and the extensive documentation and examples help.
The visual workflow editor and debugging tools have improved significantly. Understanding why a workflow failed and what to fix is more straightforward than it was in GitHub Actions’ early days.
Matrix Builds
Testing across multiple versions, operating systems, or configurations is straightforward with matrix strategies. Define the axes of variation, and GitHub Actions runs all combinations. This is particularly valuable for libraries that need to test across language versions or platforms.
GitHub Integration
Being native to GitHub means Actions integrates seamlessly with pull requests, issues, releases, and the rest of the GitHub experience. Status checks appear automatically, deployment environments are first-class concepts, and branch protection rules interact naturally with workflow requirements.
For teams whose development workflow centers on GitHub, this integration reduces friction. There’s no separate system to manage or authenticate.
GitLab CI Strengths
All-in-One Platform
GitLab positions itself as a complete DevOps platform, not just source control with CI bolted on. Issue tracking, CI/CD, container registry, package registry, security scanning, monitoring—it’s all integrated. For organizations that value having everything in one place, GitLab offers coherence that GitHub achieves through ecosystem integration.
The value here depends on your perspective. Some teams appreciate the unified experience. Others prefer choosing best-of-breed tools for each function.
Pipeline Visualization
GitLab’s pipeline visualization is excellent. Complex pipelines with many stages, dependencies, and conditional jobs are displayed clearly. Understanding what’s running, what’s waiting, and what’s blocked is intuitive.
The DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) visualization for complex pipelines shows job dependencies explicitly, making it easier to understand and optimize pipeline structure.
Built-in Security Features
GitLab includes SAST (Static Application Security Testing), DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing), dependency scanning, and container scanning in its CI/CD offering. These features are available at higher tiers but are integrated rather than requiring marketplace additions.
For organizations with security compliance requirements, having these capabilities built into the platform simplifies auditing and reduces tool sprawl.
Self-Hosting Flexibility
GitLab’s self-hosted option (GitLab CE/EE) provides more control over your development infrastructure. Run GitLab on your own servers, behind your firewall, with your security policies. GitHub Enterprise Server offers similar self-hosting, but GitLab’s self-hosted experience is more mature and more commonly deployed.
For regulated industries, air-gapped environments, or organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, self-hosting flexibility matters.
Parent-Child Pipelines
GitLab’s support for triggering child pipelines from parent pipelines enables sophisticated multi-project workflows. Monorepos with independent components, multi-service deployments, or complex release processes benefit from this capability.
GitHub Actions can achieve similar results through workflow dispatch and repository dispatch events, but GitLab’s model is more explicitly designed for these patterns.
Pricing Comparison
Pricing models differ and change frequently, so check current pricing for your specific situation.
GitHub Actions offers free minutes for public repositories and a monthly allocation for private repositories on paid plans. Overage is charged per minute, with different rates for different runner types (Linux, Windows, macOS).
GitLab CI includes CI/CD minutes with its subscription tiers. Higher tiers include more minutes and additional features. Self-hosted GitLab runners use your own infrastructure and don’t count against GitLab’s minute allocation.
For cost optimization:
- Both platforms let you use self-hosted runners, eliminating per-minute costs in exchange for infrastructure management
- Linux runners are cheaper than Windows or macOS on both platforms
- Caching strategies significantly impact minute consumption on both platforms
The cost-effective choice depends on your specific usage patterns, team size, and whether you’re willing to manage self-hosted runners.
Configuration Comparison
GitHub Actions uses workflow files in .github/workflows/. Each file defines a workflow with triggers, jobs, and steps. Multiple workflows can exist, triggered by different events.
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
- run: npm test
GitLab CI uses a single .gitlab-ci.yml file with stages and jobs. Jobs belong to stages, and stages run in sequence by default.
stages:
- test
test:
stage: test
image: node:latest
script:
- npm test
Both syntaxes are YAML-based and learnable. GitHub Actions’ model of separate workflows versus GitLab’s single-file approach is a matter of preference. GitHub’s approach can feel cleaner for simple cases; GitLab’s approach can be more cohesive for complex pipelines.
Runner Infrastructure
GitHub-hosted runners (GitHub Actions) are managed by GitHub. You get clean VMs for each job with pre-installed tools. Linux, Windows, and macOS are available. You pay per minute but don’t manage infrastructure.
GitLab.com shared runners serve a similar purpose for GitLab.com users. Clean environments per job, managed by GitLab, charged against your minute allocation.
Self-hosted runners are supported by both platforms. You provide the infrastructure—your servers, your cloud instances, your Kubernetes cluster—and register them with the platform. This gives you control over the environment, eliminates per-minute costs, and enables running jobs in private networks.
Self-hosted runner setup is more straightforward on GitLab, but both platforms support it well. For cost control at scale or specialized requirements, self-hosted runners are the path forward on either platform.
Making the Decision
Choose GitHub Actions if:
- You’re already using GitHub for source control and collaboration
- You want access to the largest marketplace of pre-built actions
- Your team is new to CI/CD and appreciates the approachable learning curve
- You prefer composing solutions from ecosystem components rather than built-in features
Choose GitLab CI if:
- You’re already using GitLab or evaluating GitLab as your development platform
- You want integrated security scanning, monitoring, and other DevOps features
- Self-hosting your development infrastructure is important
- You value the all-in-one platform approach over ecosystem integration
The Switching Cost Reality
Switching CI/CD platforms is possible but involves real work. Translating pipeline definitions, migrating secrets, updating integrations, and retraining team members all take time. Don’t underestimate this cost.
If you’re happy with your current platform, the CI/CD features of the alternative probably aren’t compelling enough to justify switching. If you’re choosing for a new project, the choice often follows from which platform you’re using for source control.
What About CircleCI, Jenkins, and Others?
This comparison focused on GitHub Actions versus GitLab CI because they’re the integrated options—CI/CD built into your source control platform. That integration has real value in reduced context-switching and simplified configuration.
Standalone CI/CD platforms like CircleCI offer flexibility to work with any source control and sometimes provide more sophisticated features. Jenkins offers ultimate flexibility and self-hosting but requires significant operational investment.
For most teams, the integrated option matching their source control platform is the pragmatic choice. The productivity benefits of integration typically outweigh feature differences between platforms.
The Bottom Line
GitHub Actions and GitLab CI are both capable CI/CD platforms that can handle typical workloads effectively. The best choice is usually the one that matches your source control platform.
If you’re choosing a development platform from scratch, consider the full picture—not just CI/CD but source control workflows, issue tracking, code review, security features, and the overall developer experience. The CI/CD capabilities are comparable; the broader platform decision matters more.
Either choice, invested in thoughtfully, will serve your team well. Don’t let analysis paralysis delay progress on what matters—shipping reliable software.