head to head · open source
GitLab vs crit
GitLab has 24,546 GitHub stars, 5,982 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped today. crit has 1,101 stars, 88 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped yesterday. GitLab leads on adoption by 2,129% (24,546 vs 1,101 stars). GitLab is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; crit is written in Go under MIT. GitLab has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, crit 8%. GitLab was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| GitLab | crit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.0K | ⑂ 88 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick GitLab if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crit if
- You want the crit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and crit fits your workflow better
About GitLab
GitLab is an open core DevSecOps platform that gives teams Git repository hosting, merge request code review, CI/CD pipelines, issue tracking, and wikis in one self hostable application, aimed at organizations that want to run their development lifecycle on infrastructure they control.
read the full GitLab overview →
About crit
Crit is a local, single binary review interface for agentic coding workflows that lets a developer comment directly on generated plans, code diffs, and frontend elements and send that feedback back to the coding agent.
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Frequently asked questions
Is GitLab or crit more popular?
GitLab has 24,546 GitHub stars and crit has 1,101. GitLab has the larger community by that measure.
Are GitLab and crit free?
Both are open source. GitLab has no licence declared in this registry, and crit is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between GitLab and crit?
GitLab is written in Ruby and crit in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, GitLab or crit?
Choose GitLab if you want the larger community (24,546 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose crit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.