Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Harness VS GitlabRunner

Compare Harness VS GitlabRunner and see what are their differences

Harness logo Harness

Automated Tests For Your Web App

GitlabRunner logo GitlabRunner

Speed up your CI/CD pipeline
  • Harness Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • GitlabRunner Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-03-10

Harness

Website
harness.io
Release Date
2016 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Jyoti Bansal
Employees
250 - 499

Harness features and specs

  • Continuous Delivery Automation
    Harness provides robust continuous delivery automation, allowing teams to automate deployment processes, reduce errors, and improve the speed of releasing software.
  • Finance Efficiency
    Harness includes a cost management feature that helps organizations control cloud infrastructure costs by providing insights and optimizing resource usage.
  • Simplified CI/CD Pipelines
    It offers simplified CI/CD pipeline creation with an easy-to-use interface, which reduces the complexity and time required to set up these processes.
  • Advanced Security Features
    Integrates advanced security features, such as vulnerability scanning and role-based access control, ensuring that deployments meet security compliance requirements.
  • Smart Rollbacks
    Harness has the capability of smart rollbacks that enable teams to automatically revert to a stable version if a new deployment faces issues, minimizing downtime.

Possible disadvantages of Harness

  • Learning Curve
    There can be a significant learning curve for teams new to Harness, as understanding its full capabilities and integrating it into existing workflows can take time.
  • Cost
    Harness might represent a higher cost than some other CI/CD tools, which can be a concern for smaller businesses or teams with tighter budgets.
  • Complex Configurations
    Some users report that setting up complex configurations can require advanced technical expertise, potentially necessitating additional training or hiring.
  • Integration Limitations
    Although Harness integrates with various tools, there can be limitations or complexities in configuring and maintaining these integrations, especially with less common tools.
  • Dependence on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud-based solution, Harness requires reliable internet connectivity, which might pose challenges for teams with unstable internet connections or strict data residency requirements.

GitlabRunner features and specs

  • Integration with GitLab
    GitLab Runner integrates seamlessly with GitLab CI/CD, providing a smooth experience for managing and deploying builds directly from your repositories.
  • Multiple Executor Types
    GitLab Runner supports various executors like Docker, Shell, VirtualBox, Parallels, SSH, and Kubernetes, allowing flexibility in running builds in different environments.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, GitLab Runner allows for complete transparency, the ability to customize or extend functionalities, and does not incur licensing costs.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    GitLab Runner can be installed on multiple platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows, offering versatility in build server setup.
  • Autoscaling
    With native support for autoscaling on cloud platforms, GitLab Runner can scale resources up or down, optimizing cost and performance based on demand.

Possible disadvantages of GitlabRunner

  • Complex Setup for Large Projects
    Configuring GitLab Runner for large and complex projects can be challenging, often requiring significant DevOps expertise to optimize the pipeline and runners efficiently.
  • Resource Management
    Managing resources effectively can be complex, especially when dealing with shared runners, which might lead to resource contention or inefficient builds.
  • Limited Community Support
    While GitLab Runner is open source, its community and third-party support might not be as extensive as other CI/CD tools like Jenkins, potentially leading to slower resolution of issues.
  • Lack of Plugins
    Compared to other CI/CD systems, GitLab Runner has fewer third-party plugins, which might require custom scripts or workarounds to achieve specific functionalities.
  • Dependency on GitLab
    The tight integration means that GitLab Runner is heavily reliant on GitLab, limiting its use in environments where GitLab is not the primary version control system.

Harness videos

How to FIT & CHOOSE a CLIMBING HARNESS w/ Black Diamond! VLOG

More videos:

  • Review - Best Climbing Harnesses - Top 7 Climbing Harness Reviews
  • Review - Best Dog Harness in 2019 - Top 5 Dog Harness Review

GitlabRunner videos

No GitlabRunner videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Harness and GitlabRunner)
DevOps Tools
89 89%
11% 11
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Continuous Integration
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Harness seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 15 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Harness mentions (15)

  • DevOps in 2025: the future is automated, git-ified, and kinda scary but fun.
    Harness — AI-powered delivery pipelines. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • Best CI/CD for AWS services?
    Can check out our products at harness.io. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • How we moved from Artifactory and saved $200k p.a. Part 3 of 5 - The future is Advanced Artefacts
    Harness is our Continuous Delivery (CD) tool of choice. It provides a flexible template engine, that we were able to utilise to create templates that could be reused across our teams. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • How to Install Drone CI Server in Kubernetes
    Drone by Harness is a continuous integration service that enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Harness
    Does anyone have any opinion about the DevOps company Harness - harness.io? (they also have a defunct sub r/Harnessio/). How is the pay in India (Glassdoor and AmbitionBox gives very different figures). How is the work-life balance? In Glassdoor, it doesn't look good at all. If you are a current or ex-employee, would you advise rather to not join it? Source: almost 3 years ago
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GitlabRunner mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of GitlabRunner yet. Tracking of GitlabRunner recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Harness and GitlabRunner, you can also consider the following products

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

Buddy - The simplest CI/CD tool ever made, acclaimed by top developers worldwide. It uses delivery pipelines to build, test and deploy software. Pipelines are created with over 100 ready-to-use actions, that can be arranged in any way.

Deployment.io - Deployment.io makes it super easy for startups and agile engineering teams to automate application deployments on AWS cloud.

CircleCI - CircleCI gives web developers powerful Continuous Integration and Deployment with easy setup and maintenance.

GitHub Actions - Automate your workflow from idea to production

Semaphore - Semaphore is a fully managed, high performance testing and deployment solution for your company. A Continuous Integration tool.