# GitHub vs GitLab: What Each Costs, and What Its APIs Let You Build **Published:** 2026-11-10 **Author:** Kin Lane **Canonical:** https://apievangelist.com/2026/11/10/github-vs-gitlab-what-each-costs-and-what-its-apis-let-you-build/ If you're choosing between GitHub and GitLab, you're picking where your code lives, where your builds run and how much you pay per developer for both. You're also picking an API. Both companies let you drive nearly everything through one: create repositories, open issues, trigger pipelines, manage users. The teams that get the most out of either one script it. I compared the two the way I compare any providers: what they sell, what they charge, what their APIs cover and how they score. You can see both side by side on APIs.io: [GitHub](https://apis.io/providers/github/) and [GitLab](https://apis.io/providers/gitlab/). ## What each one is for Both are hosted platforms for storing code in Git, reviewing changes and running CI/CD. The difference is mostly in emphasis. **GitHub** is built around the repository and the pull request, with a lot added on top: - GitHub Actions for workflows, on GitHub-hosted or self-hosted runners - GitHub Packages for container, npm, Maven, NuGet, RubyGems and Gradle registries - Codespaces for cloud development environments - Copilot for AI coding help, licensed separately per seat Most open source lives there, which matters if your work depends on public projects or contributors. **GitLab** sells itself as a single DevOps platform covering building, securing and managing software, and it's an open-core company. You can run the Community Edition yourself for free, or pay for the Enterprise Edition, alongside the hosted service. If self-hosting your whole toolchain is a requirement, that's GitLab's clearest advantage. ## What it costs I checked both companies' pricing pages on November 9, 2026, and they match what APIs.io has on record. **[GitHub](https://apis.io/providers/github/#pricing)** - **Free:** $0. Includes 2,000 CI/CD minutes a month and 500 MB of Packages storage. - **Team:** $4 per user per month. - **Enterprise:** $21 per user per month. - **Usage-based add-ons:** Codespaces starts at $0.18 per hour of compute and $0.07 per GB of storage. Git Large File Storage is $5 a month for 50 GB of bandwidth and 50 GB of storage. **[GitLab](https://apis.io/providers/gitlab/#pricing)** - **Free:** $0. Up to 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes a month and 10 GiB of storage. - **Premium:** $29 per user per month, billed annually. Unlimited users and 10,000 compute minutes a month. - **Ultimate:** custom pricing, with 50,000 compute minutes. - **Add-ons:** extra compute minutes are $10 per 1,000, extra storage is $5 a month per 10 GiB, and GitLab Credits for its AI features are $1 each. Premium includes $12 of credits per user each month, and Ultimate includes $24. For a team of ten, GitHub Team is $40 a month and GitLab Premium is $290. GitLab's Free plan stops at five users, so a ten-person team on GitLab is paying. That's the headline difference, but it isn't the whole bill. GitLab Premium includes far more pipeline minutes, and on GitHub Copilot is a separate license. Price the plan you'd actually run on, with your build minutes, before deciding on the sticker price. ## The APIs Both have a REST API and a GraphQL API, and both are big. - **GitHub:** APIs.io indexes 129 API pages, built from 118 OpenAPI files, plus 20 Arazzo workflows, 381 Postman collections and a first-party MCP server. - The ones most teams use are [Repos](https://apis.io/apis/github/github-repos-api/), [Issues](https://apis.io/apis/github/github-issues-api/) and [Search](https://apis.io/apis/github/github-search-api/). - Access is through GitHub Apps, OAuth apps or fine-grained personal access tokens. - GitHub Apps on Enterprise Cloud get up to 15,000 requests an hour. Conditional requests that return 304 don't count against the limit. - **GitLab:** APIs.io indexes 189 API pages, built from 188 OpenAPI files, plus 24 Arazzo workflows, 31 Postman collections and a first-party MCP server. - The core is [Projects](https://apis.io/apis/gitlab/gitlab-projects-api/), [Groups](https://apis.io/apis/gitlab/gitlab-groups-api/) and [Project Webhooks](https://apis.io/apis/gitlab/gitlab-project-webhooks-api/), plus a [GraphQL API](https://apis.io/apis/gitlab/gitlab-graphql-api/) and a [Tokens API](https://apis.io/apis/gitlab/gitlab-tokens-api/). - It uses OAuth 2.0 with authorization code, client credentials and device code flows, plus personal and project access tokens. - Authenticated calls are limited to 2,000 requests per minute per user. One practical difference: GitLab's API is the same whether you use the hosted service or run it yourself. If you might move between the two, your integration code moves with you. ## Where each one is stronger Both are in the Exemplar band of the Kin Score: GitHub at 86.0 and GitLab at 79.6. Both sit well above the [developer tools](https://apis.io/tags/developer-tools/) average of 34.5. The differences show up in individual facets: - **[Contract Quality](https://apis.io/rating/facets/contract-quality/):** GitHub 84.4, GitLab 75.1. GitHub's OpenAPI is the more complete description of what the API does, with verified examples and error responses. - **[Operational Transparency](https://apis.io/rating/facets/operational-transparency/):** GitHub 100, GitLab 90.8. GitHub publishes more about status, changes and limits. - **[Contract Governance](https://apis.io/rating/facets/contract-governance/):** GitLab 45.5, GitHub 31.8. GitLab does more to govern its API descriptions consistently. - **[Access Clarity](https://apis.io/rating/facets/access-clarity/):** GitLab 89.5, GitHub 84.2. GitLab makes it clearer how to get in and what it costs, and publishes more security detail, including SOC 2, ISO 27001 and PCI DSS. For AI agents the two are close. Both have MCP servers and OAuth protected-resource metadata. GitLab documents a dry-run mode and idempotency, and GitHub documents how to undo what a call does. ## Which one to pick - **If most of your work touches open source,** or your team already lives in pull requests and you want the cheapest per-seat plan, GitHub is the default. Team at $4 a seat is hard to beat. - **If you need to run the platform yourself,** or your security and compliance teams want one tool for source, CI/CD and scanning, GitLab is built for that. Its API stays the same wherever you run it. - **If your pipelines run all day,** compare the minutes, not the seats. GitLab Premium's 10,000 included minutes against GitHub's 2,000 on Free can change the math. - **If you're automating either one,** start from the OpenAPI on the APIs.io provider pages. Both are complete enough to generate a client from. Neither is the wrong answer for most teams. The right one depends on where you host, how much CI you run and how many people need a seat.