GitHub's pricing page is built around three tiers. Free costs nothing and includes unlimited public and private repositories, unlimited collaborators on public repositories, 2,000 CI/CD minutes a month and 500 MB of Packages storage free for public repositories, plus Dependabot security and version updates, issues, protected branches, Pages and Wikis. Team lists at $4 USD per user/month and Enterprise starts at $21 USD per user/month; both carry a 'for the first 12 months' note on the page against the rate, so the term attached to the number is worth reading before you budget. GitHub Advanced Security, Copilot for Business and Premium Support are sold as add-ons, and Codespaces bills usage on top of the seat.
TL;DR
GitHub prices collaboration cheaply: a free plan with unlimited public and private repositories, 2,000 CI/CD minutes a month, 500 MB of Packages storage, Dependabot, issues, pull requests, Pages and Wikis; Team at $4 per user/month and Enterprise from $21 per user/month, with Codespaces metered on top at $0.18 an hour for compute and $0.07 GB a month for storage. GitLab prices the whole DevSecOps platform: Free at $0 with 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes and 10 GiB, Premium at $29 per user/month billed annually with 10,000 minutes and 500 GiB, and Ultimate quoted rather than published. GitHub is the cheaper seat; GitLab is the wider product.
GitLab publishes its limits instead of its ceiling. The free plan is $0 per user/month with 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes a month and 10 GiB of adjustable storage. Premium is $29 per user/month billed annually and brings unlimited licensed users, 10,000 compute minutes, 500 GiB of storage and $12 of GitLab Credits a month. Ultimate is not published: the pricing page shows 'Get custom pricing' and lists 50,000 compute minutes, unlimited guest users and $24 of included credits. Overage is explicit - compute minutes at $10 per 1,000, storage at $5 a month per 10 GiB, credits at $1 each, and Enterprise Agile Planning at $15 per user/month for non-developer stakeholders.
The comparison is less about version control, which both do well, and more about where you want CI/CD, project management and security scanning to live. GitHub keeps them modular: a cheap seat, then paid extras. GitLab bundles them into one tier and charges accordingly. Teams that already have a strong GitHub habit rarely move for price alone; teams that want one vendor for build, test, deploy and scan usually find GitLab's Premium covers the ground that would cost several GitHub add-ons.
| Feature | GitHub | GitLab |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0: unlimited public and private repositories, 2,000 CI/CD minutes a month | $0: 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes, 10 GiB storage |
| Entry paid plan | Team: $4 USD per user/month | Premium: $29 per user/month billed annually |
| Top published plan | Enterprise: from $21 USD per user/month | Ultimate: quoted as custom pricing, 50,000 compute minutes |
| Storage | 500 MB Packages storage free for public repositories; Large File Storage from $5 a month for 50 GB | 10 GiB on Free, 500 GiB on Premium and Ultimate, $5 a month per extra 10 GiB |
| Self-hosted option | Enterprise Server, sold separately from the cloud plans | Self-Managed and Dedicated editions alongside GitLab.com |
| Security scanning | Advanced Security is a paid add-on | SAST and dependency scans on Free and Premium as JSON artifacts; Ultimate renders them in merge requests |
| Metered extras | Codespaces compute from $0.18 an hour, storage $0.07 GB a month | Compute minutes $10 per 1,000, GitLab Credits $1 each |
| Planning and project management | Issues, boards and project planning built in at every tier | Team project management on Premium; Enterprise Agile Planning add-on at $15 per user/month |
Pick GitHub if
GitHub's free plan is the most generous of the two for pure collaboration, and at $4 a seat for Team it is the cheaper way to give a whole company private repositories, review flow and CI minutes. It stops being cheap when you need advanced security scanning or a managed dev environment, because those arrive as separate line items. For open source and for organisations where contributors outside the company need to participate, the free public-repository story is hard to beat.
Pick GitLab if
GitLab Premium at $29 per seat buys CI/CD, code review, project management, 10,000 compute minutes and 500 GiB in one line of the invoice, which often works out below a GitHub seat plus the add-ons you would need to match it. The free tier is honest about its limits rather than generous about them, and Ultimate's price is something you have to ask for. Choose it when consolidating vendors matters more than minimising the per-seat number.
No independent ratings, review scores or user quotes were collected for this pair; nothing here comes from reviews or community polls. Prices were read on 2026-10-15 from github.com/pricing and about.gitlab.com/pricing. GitLab's Ultimate tier has no published rate and is shown on the page as custom pricing.
Per seat, yes: GitLab Premium lists at $29 per user/month billed annually against GitHub Team at $4 USD per user/month. Per capability, it depends. GitLab Premium bundles CI/CD, 10,000 compute minutes, 500 GiB of storage and project management, while GitHub charges for equivalent capacity through Actions minutes, Packages storage and Advanced Security add-ons.
Four published extras: compute minutes at $10 per 1,000, storage at $5 a month for each additional 10 GiB, GitLab Credits at $1 each (Premium includes $12 of credits per user/month, Ultimate $24), and Enterprise Agile Planning at $15 per user/month for non-technical stakeholders.
Yes, at $0 with unlimited public and private repositories, 2,000 CI/CD minutes a month, 500 MB of Packages storage free for public repositories, Dependabot updates, issues, pull requests, Pages and Wikis. Collaborators on public repositories are unlimited on all three plans; the paid tiers are what add Codespaces, higher review controls and enterprise security features.
No. The GitLab pricing page shows 'Get custom pricing' for Ultimate and asks you to contact its sales team, while still listing what the tier contains: 50,000 compute minutes a month, unlimited guest users and $24 of included GitLab Credits per user/month.
GitLab publishes Self-Managed and Dedicated editions alongside GitLab.com, and its free tiers can be run on your own infrastructure. GitHub offers Enterprise Server as a separate, negotiated product rather than as a plan on the pricing page. Both paths change the pricing conversation from per-seat SaaS to infrastructure and support.
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