Git vs GitLab: What's the difference?

What’s the difference between Git and GitLab?

The key difference between Git and GitLab is that Git is a free, open source version control tool that developers install locally on their machines, while GitLab is an online platform that hosts Git repositories and provides a full suite of DevOps tools to manage the entire software development lifecycle.

Git is a piece of software. GitLab is a service and a platform. They aren’t competitive offerings but instead work together: Git tracks changes in code, and GitLab adds collaboration, automation, and governance around Git.

What is Git?

Git bills itself as a simple and efficient distributed version control system.

Developers can take snapshots of their code at different points in time, creating a version history that documents the development process. These snapshots, called commits, can be shared across teams of developers worldwide.

Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 and is maintained by The Linux Foundation. Its widespread adoption is demonstrated by the thousands of contributors to the Linux kernel over the past two decades — all of whom rely on Git to manage their code contributions.

Shortcomings of Git

As powerful as Git is, it doesn’t cover everything modern organizations need. That’s where platforms like GitLab, GitHub, and Bitbucket step in.

For example, Git supports collaboration but doesn’t define a central repository. Many organizations prefer a single, shared “source of truth.” GitLab provides this by letting teams create centralized repositories hosted either in the cloud or on self-managed infrastructure.

Git also lacks built-in user management, permissions, or security controls. Without extra tooling, anyone with access could alter history or delete branches. Platforms like GitLab fill these gaps with authentication, authorization, and role-based access control.

Benefits of GitLab

While GitLab makes Git easier to use, it goes far beyond repository hosting. GitLab’s strength is its “single application” approach: it integrates source control with planning, CI/CD, security, monitoring, and deployment in one platform.

Some of GitLab’s key features include:

• A web-based interface that simplifies Git workflows.

• GitLab CI/CD for building pipelines directly within the platform.

• Issue tracking and Agile project management boards.

• Merge request workflows with code review and approval processes.

• Security and compliance tools such as code scanning, secrets detection, and dependency scanning.

• Built-in container registry for Docker images.

• Package registry for libraries and artifacts.

• Self-hosted options for organizations that need full control over data and compliance.

Unlike Git, which has stabilized as a mature tool with minimal new functionality, GitLab is constantly evolving, adding features that expand its role beyond version control to cover nearly every stage of the DevOps lifecycle.

Basic Git commands

Despite GitLab’s extras, the core Git commands remain the same. Developers today still use familiar commands such as:

• git init to create a repository

• git clone to copy a remote repository

• git add to stage files

• git commit to record changes

• git merge and git rebase to manage branches

• git fetch and git pull to sync with a remote

• git push to share updates

• git clean and git reset for cleanup

Over time, Git has only introduced a few small usability improvements, such as splitting git checkout into git switch and git restore.

Git vs GitLab competitors

The competitors also highlight the difference.

Git competes against other version control systems, such as:

• Subversion (SVN)

• Perforce Helix Core

• Mercurial

• PVCS Version Manager

• Rational ClearCase

In contrast, GitLab competes against other DevOps platforms and Git hosting services, such as:

• GitHub

• Bitbucket (Atlassian)

• Azure DevOps Repos

• AWS CodeCommit

• SourceForge

Git is a tool. GitLab is a platform.

Should I use Git or GitLab?

You don’t need to choose between Git and GitLab — they work best together.

Git is the underlying technology that powers distributed version control. GitLab builds on top of Git, providing a unified solution for source control, CI/CD, project management, security, and deployment.

If you only need basic version control, Git alone is sufficient. If you want integrated workflows, team collaboration, and DevOps automation, GitLab complements Git perfectly.

Git is a proven, rock-solid version control system. GitLab is a fast-evolving, all-in-one DevOps platform built around Git.

Together, they give developers and organizations the best of both worlds: stability and innovation.

Cameron McKenzie is an AWS Certified AI Practitioner, Machine Learning Engineer, Solutions Architect and author of many popular books in the software development and Cloud Computing space. His growing YouTube channel training devs in Java, Spring, AI and ML has well over 30,000 subscribers.