Originally published September 24, 2019, updated March 15, 2023 by Content Specialist Dominika Kuraś-Moskwa

Every development team knows the value of a quality repository management solution. It’s a critical component of collaborative software development. Repository management services allow software developers to manage changes to the source code and its related files, creating and maintaining multiple versions in one central location. Such repositories bring many benefits to the software development process. Even small teams appreciate having one central place for storing all the code versions. By using repository management services, development teams can deliver their work faster and preserve their momentum as they scale up. 

There are many different repository management services available on the market today. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the comparison: Bitbucket vs GitLab. We’ll cover aspects such as basic features, pricing plans, and essential functionalities like repository import.

GitLab is a web-based repository management solution that allows teams to collaborate on code, duplicate it, and then merge the finished code into existing projects. This single application offers free open and private repositories.

Today, GitLab is used by tech giants such as IBM, Sony, Oracle, Alibaba, as well as NASA, SpaceX, and CERN. The solution includes wiki and issue tracking features that come in handy to teams looking to expand their use of repository management solutions. It’s a DevOps-ready tool that offers a Git repository manager and CI/CD pipeline features under an open-source license. 

GitLab top advantages:

In addition, it offers various single-application advantages such as reduced cycle times and enhanced productivity. Less manual typing, and fewer assignments for individuals to carry out. It also eliminates the need for teams to acquire multiple tools, and install several applications, as well as for users to undergo numerous authentication processes.

Bitbucket is a repository management solution from the Australian company, Atlassian. This web-based version control repository is useful in development teams that use Mercurial or Git revision control systems. 

Teams can use Bitbucket to plan projects, collaborate on code, test code, and then deploy it. The solution offers many different features to accelerate the development process. For example, teams can approve code reviews efficiently with pull requests. Moreover, they can hold discussions right inside the source code thanks to inline comments. Bitbucket pipelines with deployment allow building, testing, and deploying code with integrated CI/CD.

Bitbucket top advantages:

Naturally, each of these two solutions offers an entirely different ecosystem of features and capabilities. But if you consider the basic features required for repository management, both GitLab and Bitbucket include a lot of similarities.

Below you can see the comparison.

An important feature to consider in choosing a repository management solution is its relation to the open-source ecosystem. 

Out of the two, only GitLab offers an open-source version. The Community Edition source code is available on the website. The Enterprise Edition code is proprietary. While Bitbucket is not available in the open-source version. If you invest in a self-hosted version, you will be provided with the full source code together with extensive product customization options.

To help development teams discover public projects and get in touch with other developers, a repository management solution needs to contain public repository discovery functions. Fortunately, both GitLab and Bitbucket offer that. However, Bitbucket also enables developers to follow other users easily and helps them connect with developers who have similar interests.

Note: The most important place for open-source collaboration is GitHub. Another repository management system that in itself is not open-source but contains the largest number of public open-source projects. It’s easily the best social hub for software developers and anyone else interested in what’s happening in the tech scene. 

Teams that integrate Jira with Bitbucket release versions 14% more often than other teams. Thanks to Jira + Bitbucket integration, we can increase our work automation. Due to the fact that the tickets are automatically transferred as we complete the work in Bitbucket. Also, with the Code in Jira view, we’re able to include an issue key in a commit or branch name from Bitbucket. The changes will be automatically updated in Jira. Another facilitation resulting from this integration is the ability to view our assigned Jira issue in Bitbucket. Thanks to it we don’t have to maneuver between the tools and quickly find out which tasks are still ahead of us.

Additionally, Jira and Bitbucket integration allows for:

Jira integration was made to meet the same goals as in the case of Jira and Bitbucket integration: acceleration and improvement of work, as well as process automation. The integration is available both for Cloud and Data Center users.

After setting up the integration, we can benefit from features like:

Moreover, GitLab can be a great support for individual project management. It has its own Issues, Epics, Wikis, Milestones, so very basic workflow management may be accessible without any integration. 

When picking your repository management solution, pay special attention to whether the tool allows using your previous projects easily. While GitLab supports only Git repositories, Bitbucket offers support for both Git and Mercurial. Moving to GitLab might become a little complicated if you’re using Mercurial or other repositories. 

Fortunately, GitLab is equipped with a repository import feature that helps users to migrate from other platforms easily. Bitbucket also supports the repository import from Git, as well as SVN, Google Code, CodePlex, HG, and SourceForge.

The process of searching and viewing the results can be efficiently accelerated by using the semantic search function. Of the tools compared, this option is only available for Bitbucket. Semantic search puts definitions first, before usage examples and variable names. Code-aware search is especially helpful for teams who have many repos or large code bases. Bitbucket, instead of indexing the code as text, uses the semantic search function, analyzes the code syntax, and makes sure that the definitions matching our search term are prioritized.

While GitLab doesn’t offer semantic search, there is a Premium feature that could be used instead – Advanced Search based on Elasticsearch.

Both Bitbucket and GitLab offer free plans, but these already include some differences. For example, Bitbucket’s plan, allows five team members to collaborate on an unlimited number of software development projects. The repositories have a limit of 1GB. When you reach that limit, you will be notified by email.

GitLab offers a free cloud-hosted plan that allows an unlimited number of users to collaborate on an unlimited number of both public and private projects. To do that, they can take advantage of a 100GB transfer limit and 5GB of storage. If your team is looking for a cloud-based solution for their private projects, GitLab might be the best match. 

GitLab Community Edition is a good option for teams that want to fully control their code base and have the resources to maintain their servers (since this is a self-hosted plan). The drawback of this plan is that it doesn’t include some of the more advanced features.

What about paid plans? In general, both tools offer different plans suited to the requirements of different teams. Bitbucket’s cloud-hosted plan starts with ten users for $3 per user a month (for teams bigger than 5 users). GitLab offers a plan starting from $29 per user a month.

Don’t forget that the tools also have self-hosted plans. GitLab’s self-hosted version provides sophisticated features in comparison to the cloud-hosted one. Each of these providers offers a cloud-based and self-hosted version of their product, so make sure to carefully review these options when choosing the repository management solution for your team.

It is a rough choice, but it depends on your specific needs and preferences. Both of the above offer similar features and experiences via their free plans. However, GitLab paid plans are more transparent. The two offer a bunch of integrations and surely will be a great help to your DevOps team. If you are looking for a tool with more extensive features like Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, code review, and project management, GitLab may be a better choice. On the other hand, if you are already using other Atlassian products and want to have a seamless integration, Bitbucket may be your way to go. 

Are you still considering which one is a better option, and need a hand? Deviniti team is here to help. We have years of experience in implementing repo tools for organizations of all shapes and sizes.