$ ~/cicdcalculator

GitHub Actions vs GitLab CI in 2026
./compare --actions --gitlab-ci

GitHub Actions and GitLab CI are the two dominant cloud CI/CD platforms for teams that have made a source-control choice and want their pipelines to live in the same place as their code. Both ship per-minute Linux runners, hosted control planes, marketplace ecosystems and self-hosted runner options. The differences are real but rarely as binary as marketing materials suggest. This page walks through how they compare on cost, features, ecosystem and operational fit in 2026.

Prices below come from the GitHub pricing and GitLab pricing pages, re-verified June 2026 (GitHub rates reflect the January 2026 cut; GitLab Ultimate moved to custom pricing).

Plans side by side

TierGitHub ActionsGitLab CI
Free seat$0 (private 2K mins)$0 (400 mins / group)
Mid-tier seat$4 (Team)$29 (Premium)
Mid-tier minutes3,000 / mo10,000 / mo
Top tier seat$21 (Enterprise)Custom quote (Ultimate)
Top tier minutes50,000 / mo50,000 / mo
Linux overage$0.006 / min$0.010 / min

Real monthly cost at three team sizes

Numbers below assume Linux 2-core runners, GitHub Actions Team and GitLab Premium plans, average 7-minute build duration, and roughly 5,000 / 30,000 / 120,000 total build minutes per month for the three team sizes.

5-dev team
Actions
$32
GitLab Premium
$145

Actions wins on seat fee at small scale. GitLab seat premium is hard to justify unless you specifically need Premium features.

25-dev team
Actions
$262
GitLab Premium
$925

Actions still ahead. GitLab seat premium compounds with team size; the included-minutes advantage flattens once overage starts.

100-dev team
Actions
$1,100
GitLab Premium
$4,000

GitLab's seat premium dominates at scale. Self-hosted runners (free at platform level) are the standard answer at this volume on either platform.

Features that matter, honestly compared

The marketing pages list dozens of features on each side. Most of them do not actually affect day-to-day pipeline work. Four genuinely move the needle.

First, the marketplace gap. GitHub Actions has 25,000+ published actions covering nearly every common CI task. GitLab's CI template registry is closer to 1,000 official-plus-community items. For a team without dedicated platform engineers, this difference is the single biggest productivity tax on the GitLab side. Most common pipeline patterns are a one-line drop-in on Actions and a 15-line job definition on GitLab.

Second, the security suite. GitLab Ultimate ships SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, container scanning and licence compliance built in. GitHub matches this only with Advanced Security, which is a separate paid add-on. For regulated industries where these features are required, GitLab Ultimate is often the cheaper bundle even at its custom-quoted enterprise price. For everyone else, third-party scanners on Actions are cheaper.

Third, environments and deploy boards. GitLab's Environments feature gives a built-in view of which build is deployed where, including manual approval gates and automatic rollback to the previous deploy. GitHub Actions has Environments too but the feature set is shallower. For teams that care about deploy visibility, GitLab is meaningfully better out of the box.

Fourth, the source-control coupling. Choosing GitHub Actions essentially requires committing to GitHub as source. Choosing GitLab CI similarly requires GitLab. Migrations between source-control providers are far more painful than CI migrations, so this is the load-bearing decision for most teams; the CI/CD choice follows from it.

The runner OS picture

Both platforms offer Linux, Windows and macOS hosted runners: Linux is the baseline, Windows costs more, macOS costs roughly 10x. GitHub Actions cut hosted-runner prices by up to 39% in January 2026 (Linux 2-core $0.006, Windows $0.010, macOS $0.062 per minute, all-in). GitLab has stayed at the $0.010 per minute headline rate for shared Linux runners, with macOS runners consuming minutes at a 6-12x cost factor.

For iOS-shipping teams, neither platform's hosted macOS pricing is competitive with self-hosted Mac mini fleets. See the iOS CI cost analysis for the actual numbers. Both platforms support self-hosted macOS runners cleanly.

Recommendation by scenario

Default to GitHub Actions if you are on GitHub for source. The ecosystem and time-to-first-pipeline advantages are too large to argue against, and the pricing is competitive at every team size below 100 developers.

Choose GitLab CI if you are on GitLab for source, or if you need the bundled security and compliance features that come with Ultimate. The CI experience is strong, particularly for teams that value deploy environments and merge approval workflows. The seat premium versus Actions is real but justifiable if you actually use the bundled features.

Consider switching CI without switching source if your bills cross $5,000 monthly and self-hosted runners are not absorbing the load. Per-minute platforms get expensive fast; Buildkite or Jenkins are common cost-driven alternatives that integrate with both GitHub and GitLab as source.

More comparisons

GitHub Actions deep diveGitLab CI deep diveCircleCI vs ActionsGitLab CI vs Jenkinscompare allcost calculator

Frequently Asked Questions

# click any question to expand

Which is cheaper at small team size?>
GitHub Actions Team plan is usually cheaper for a 5-10 person team because the seat fee is $4 versus GitLab Premium at $29. Both include enough Linux minutes for typical small-team workloads. At 5 developers, GitHub Actions costs around $20-40 monthly versus GitLab Premium at around $145 monthly. The gap narrows only when the team genuinely needs GitLab Ultimate features like SAST or DAST scanning.
Which has more included build minutes?>
GitLab gives more headroom on paid plans. GitLab Premium includes 10,000 CI minutes per group per month against GitHub Actions Team's 3,000 minutes per organisation. Heavy-build teams reach the GitHub overage point faster. On the free plans, both are stingy: GitHub Free gets 2,000 Linux minutes, GitLab Free gets 400 minutes per group. For OSS projects, GitHub Actions is more generous (unlimited on public repos versus GitLab's still-capped allowance).
Which has the better ecosystem?>
GitHub Actions, decisively. The Actions Marketplace has over 25,000 actions. GitLab's catalog of pipeline templates and Includes is closer to 1,000 official plus community items. For most common CI patterns (deploy to S3, run Lighthouse, post to Slack) GitHub Actions has a one-line action already published; GitLab usually requires writing it as a job. The ecosystem gap is real and matters most for teams without dedicated platform engineering.
Which is better for security and compliance?>
GitLab Ultimate. Built-in SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, container scanning, license compliance and value-stream analytics all come bundled; Ultimate pricing is custom and sales-quoted. GitHub matches some of this via GitHub Advanced Security, but Advanced Security is sold separately and adds substantial per-user cost. For regulated industries that need all-in-one security plus pipeline, GitLab Ultimate is often the cheaper bundle despite the enterprise price tag.
Which is faster to set up?>
GitHub Actions, for most teams. Workflow files live alongside code in .github/workflows, the editor in the GitHub UI is solid, and the marketplace means many pipelines are a copy-paste away. GitLab CI configuration is also in-repo (.gitlab-ci.yml) and the UI is competent, but the absence of the marketplace means more pipeline assembly from primitives. Time-to-first-pipeline is typically 30 percent shorter on GitHub Actions for greenfield projects.
Can both run self-hosted runners?>
Yes. GitHub Actions self-hosted runners are free at the platform level; you pay only for the underlying compute. GitLab Runner is also free; the SaaS GitLab control plane charges per user but the runner side incurs no platform charge. Most teams using either platform at scale operate self-hosted runners for cost reasons; the runner architecture and pipeline syntax are similar enough that moving between them is a 1-2 day project.
Can I migrate between them?>
Yes, in both directions. GitHub Actions Importer is an official tool that converts GitLab CI YAML into Actions workflows. GitLab provides a similar importer for the reverse direction. Auto-translation handles most common patterns but produces verbose YAML that benefits from manual cleanup. Plan 2-6 weeks for a typical mid-size team to complete a migration including rewriting any custom GitLab runners or GitHub composite actions.