# GitLab Licensing Consultation: Which Tier Do You Need?

GitLab's three tiers, Free, Premium, and Ultimate, differ in price, user limits, and which security and compliance features are included. Before the tier, though, comes the question of who runs GitLab: GitLab Inc. on GitLab.com, or you or an operator on infrastructure you choose. Some of what the pricing page lists, the CI/CD minutes among them, only exists on GitLab.com.

VSHN is a certified [GitLab Select Partner](/partners/) with the MSP designation and resells all three tiers. This page sets out how GitLab.com SaaS licensing differs from self-managed, what each tier includes, and what changes in your license if you're moving from GitHub.

## SaaS vs self-managed licensing

**GitLab.com (SaaS):** GitLab Inc. hosts your instance, billed per user per month at the prices below. Your data lands on Google Cloud infrastructure in the USA, and upgrades and maintenance are GitLab's responsibility, not yours. Pipelines run on GitLab's hosted runners, drawing on a monthly quota of CI/CD minutes that depends on the tier.

**Self-managed:** You, or an operator like VSHN, run GitLab on infrastructure you choose, licensed at any of the three tiers, including the open-source Community Edition. Self-managed licensing is the same per-seat pricing as SaaS; what changes is who runs the instance and where the data lives. Pipelines run on your own runners, so there is no minute quota: the cost of CI is the compute those runners use, and how well their capacity follows the load. [VSHN's managed GitLab](/comparison/) runs self-managed instances on Swiss cloud, your existing Azure or AWS tenant, or on-premises, for a fixed monthly operations fee separate from the GitLab license.

## GitLab Free vs Premium vs Ultimate

| | Free | Premium | Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| **Price** | $0/user/month | $29/user/month, billed annually | Custom pricing, quoted by GitLab |
| **Users** | 5 per top-level group | Unlimited licensed users | Unlimited guest users |
| **CI/CD minutes** (GitLab.com only) | 400/month | 10,000/month | 50,000/month |
| **Core scope** | Source code management, CI/CD, Static Application Security Testing | Everything in Free, plus advanced CI/CD, merge request approvals, SLA management, priority support | Everything in Premium, plus Application Security Testing, Software Supply Chain Security, Vulnerability Management, Strategic Portfolio Management, Value Stream Management, Compliance and Governance |
| **AI add-on** | GitLab Credits purchased separately | $12/user/month of GitLab Credits included | $24/user/month of GitLab Credits included |

GitLab's pricing page marks the CI/CD minutes "available on GitLab.com plans only". On a self-managed instance, compare the tiers on features and price per user.

GitLab does not publish a per-seat Ultimate price: it's quoted directly by GitLab's sales team, and VSHN can get that quote as part of your consultation. Regulated organizations in banking, insurance, and healthcare usually need Ultimate for its audit reporting and compliance frameworks; most other teams are well served by Premium's SLA management and priority support.

## VSHN as GitLab Select Partner: licensing support

VSHN resells GitLab subscriptions, including Premium and Ultimate, and can equally operate your instance on a license you already hold. The license is quoted as a line item separate from VSHN's operations fee, so you see what goes to GitLab and what goes to VSHN. That separation matters when you're comparing options: a license upgrade from Premium to Ultimate changes what GitLab charges per seat, not what VSHN charges to run the instance.

## Migrating from GitHub: what changes in your license

GitHub's own per-seat prices sit in a different structure than GitLab's. GitHub Team is $4/user/month, and GitHub Enterprise starts at $21/user/month for the features regulated teams typically need (advanced security, compliance, flexible deployment). AI code assistance, GitHub Copilot on the GitHub side and GitLab Credits on the GitLab side, is a separate add-on on both platforms, priced apart from the base per-seat license.

There's no direct feature-for-feature match between the two license structures: GitHub Enterprise and GitLab Ultimate both bundle advanced security and compliance features, but what's included differs, and the two companies price and package AI differently. The licensing comparison is one part of a GitHub-to-GitLab migration; the other parts (repository history, CI pipeline conversion, issue and permission mapping) depend on your current GitHub setup and are worth scoping in a consultation instead of estimating from list prices alone.

If you're moving from a self-hosted GitHub Enterprise Server deployment, the same self-managed vs. SaaS choice applies on the GitLab side: keep running self-managed under VSHN's operations, or move to GitLab.com SaaS and drop the operations question entirely.

## Next steps

Bring your current license (GitLab or GitHub), your user count, and your compliance requirements, and VSHN will work out which tier fits and what a GitLab quote or a GitHub migration would look like.

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