
GitLab
BitBucket
VS Code
Git
Treehouse
Pantheon
CodePen
Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

GitKraken
SourceTree
SmartGit
Fork
Tower
TortoiseGit
Git Extensions
GitHub Desktop is a seamless way to contribute to projects on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.

Which is more popular?
Based on our record, GitHub seems to be a lot more popular than GitHub Desktop. While we know about 2484 links to GitHub, we've tracked only 136 mentions of GitHub Desktop.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | github.com | desktop.github.com |
| Pricing | ||
| Company | Startup from the United States · 500 - 999 employees · 2008 | — |
| Listed in |
What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


Overall verdict
Why this product is good
Recommended for
No analysis of GitHub Desktop yet.
Walkthroughs and reviews on video.
How to do coding peer reviews with Github
More videos
How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


Share your experience with using GitHub and GitHub Desktop. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
External articles and on-site reviews we used to compare the two products.


GitHub is an essential platform for modern software development. It makes it easy to host, manage, and collaborate on code while providing powerful tools for version control, project management, and team...
GitHub Discussions is a communication forum for the community around an open source or internal project. Discussions enable fluid, open conversation in a public forum. Discussions are transparent and accessible, but...
However, like any (human) product, the platform has its limits, downsides, and critics. GitHub has been barred by certain governments, and even if that isn’t exactly the company’s fault, the users are the ones limited...
Creating branches and switching to existing ones isn’t a hassle, so is merging code with the master branch. Furthermore, you can track your changes with GitHub Desktop. Check out our detailed guide on how to use...
GitHub Desktop is the global standard for working with Git-related tasks in a graphical user interface (GUI). It is an open-source tool and hence completely free to use for all sorts of projects. It is available for...
GitHub Desktop is, perhaps, the most famous solution for working with Git in a visual interface. It is familiar to all developers keeping their repositories on GitHub (Git repository hosting service used for...
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


For developers who cannot access Fable 5, Claude Opus 4.8 offers the best alternative. Integrating this model into your daily workflow is straightforward, especially when using modern development platforms like GitHub for repository... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
1228 push attempts died with fatal: could not read Username for 'https://github.com' — an https remote with no credential helper and no stored Credentials. First one 2026-07-21T20:48:03Z, still failing as I write this. Thirty-nine Days. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
They can include the protocol, it’s that regardless of what’s put in there it’ll use https, which is explained with examples both in the following sentences and then in more detail in a linked doc. > For repositories on GitHub, GitLab,... - Source: Hacker News / 21 days ago
Optional: You can also download GitHub Desktop (https://desktop.github.com) if you prefer a GUI version, but this guide focuses on Git Bash to understand the basics. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
Download the latest version from the GitHub Desktop website. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
I’m not going to dive into Git commands here — you can find plenty of tutorials online. If you’re not a fan of using the plain terminal CLI, you can also manage repositories with tools like GitHub Desktop or SourceTree, which provide a... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
When comparing GitHub and GitHub Desktop, you can also consider the following products.

Create, review and deploy code together with GitLab open source git repo management software | GitLab
Compare GitLab to GitHub or GitHub Desktop:

The intuitive, fast, and beautiful cross-platform Git client.
Compare GitKraken to GitHub or GitHub Desktop:

Bitbucket is a free code hosting site for Mercurial and Git. Manage your development with a hosted wiki, issue tracker and source code.
Compare BitBucket to GitHub or GitHub Desktop:

Mac and Windows client for Mercurial and Git.
Compare SourceTree to GitHub or GitHub Desktop:

Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft
Compare VS Code to GitHub or GitHub Desktop:

SmartGit is a front-end for the distributed version control system Git and runs on Windows, Mac OS...
Compare SmartGit to GitHub or GitHub Desktop: