Every engineering organization seems to want the same thing right now: fewer tools, one platform, and a cleaner path from commit to production. The open question is which platform wins. The ETR Research team gathered qualitative commentary on GitLab from 14 technology leaders, 10 planning to increase spend over the next six months and four planning to cut. The same consolidation instinct runs through both groups. For increasers, GitLab is the platform absorbing everything else. For decreasers, GitLab is one of the tools being absorbed, and in every case, GitHub is on the receiving end.
(The split reflects ETR's sampling design, which ensures both spend groups are represented, not a market-wide ratio. With 14 respondents, these are directional signals.)
Consolidation cuts both ways. ETR flags Vendor Consolidation as a theme for four of 10 increasers and three of four decreasers.
GitHub is the common destination. All four decreasers are moving spend to GitHub, either GitHub Enterprise on its own or alongside other Microsoft products.
Commitment depth differs. Five increasers tie their spend to long-term strategy, while four describe short-term or project-driven needs. All four decreasers describe a long-term shift.
Switching costs look low. Respondents on both sides describe GitLab and GitHub as close substitutes, which lowers the barrier to moving.
The strongest increaser accounts aren't adding seats at the margins. They're standardizing on GitLab as the center of their software delivery stack. An EMEA department head at a midsize services firm is expanding licenses across newly integrated business units, upgrading teams to advanced plans and AI features, and phasing out self-hosted legacy CI tools. GitLab, this respondent said, "serves as our DevSecOps backbone."
A North American architect at a small services firm is retiring rival tools for issue tracking, source control, and CI/CD as part of a multiyear modernization program. The goal is "to replace fragmented toolchains with a more unified solution," and the respondent was clear the move is about consolidation, not pricing.
Increasers also see GitLab as a way to bring order to sprawl. An EMEA education department head is newly adopting GitLab and "looking to bring in all development from isolated code repos into it centrally," replacing team-owned source control to gain central visibility and security scanning. An EMEA telecom engineer cites project migrations and mergers and acquisitions as reasons to standardize, noting that new projects no longer start on the legacy version control system the team once relied on.
Not every increase signals deeper commitment. Business Growth is the most common increaser theme, flagged for five of 10, and much of that growth is tactical: more projects, more developers, and more repositories. Some of these accounts are candid about GitLab's limited role. A C-level healthcare executive expanding use for infosec integrations said of GitLab's strategic fit, "It doesn't, really. This is a fairly specific use case." A C-level retail executive at a small company described the spend as "client and project driven, not company specific."
Even committed accounts hedge. The telecom engineer standardizing on GitLab cautioned that in a large organization, "some of the higher-ups may one day decide to veer some other direction."
All four decreasers are based in North America, and all four are moving spend to GitHub. A senior engineer at a Fortune 500 telecom is shifting to GitHub Enterprise as part of a long-term strategy. A C-level financial services executive at a large firm is consolidating onto GitHub as a single repository tool. Asked how GitLab fits the long-term IT strategy, this respondent answered, "[I] have to say that right now, no."
A senior engineer at another large company is replacing bespoke build systems with GitHub and Microsoft products because the organization is "heavily invested with [them] for Cloud." The shift is a notable reversal: "GitLab was once our central code repository and build system," this respondent said.
A C-level education executive is migrating from on-premises GitLab to hosted GitHub Enterprise to reduce on-premises infrastructure, improve resiliency, and secure better pricing. This account offered the most pointed comment in the report: "There's very little difference between GitLab and its competitors, making it easy to switch."
That view echoes on the increaser side. A C-level telecom executive at a midsize EMEA company is testing GitLab and GitHub head to head for a reliable on-premises solution: "Either GitLab or GitHub[,] so yes[,] one or the other." For now, this respondent rates GitLab's on-premises setup well and its pricing as "not bad," a reminder that the same deployment model one customer is leaving is a selling point for another.
The commentary points to a market where platform consolidation is the dominant force, and the real question is where teams consolidate. GitLab is winning where buyers want an integrated DevSecOps platform, especially when they're retiring a patchwork of legacy CI, issue tracking, and source control tools. It's losing where organizations are already deep in the Microsoft ecosystem and see GitHub as the natural home, or where they view the two platforms as interchangeable and let price and hosting decide.
Across these accounts, the platform story is what keeps GitLab sticky. Where buyers see it as just another repository, it's easier to replace.
This article draws on ETR's August 2026 Edge Report on GitLab, which includes all 14 account-level responses, the complete theme breakdown for both spend groups, and the specific tools increasers are retiring as they consolidate. To get the full Edge Report, reach out to the ETR Sales team.