Let’s be honest: CI/CD setup can feel like a productivity black hole. You just want to test and deploy your code, not debug YAML indentation for an hour.

I’ve used both GitHub Actions and GitLab CI extensively. Here’s the bottom line: both work great, but they waste your time in very different ways.

The Quick Verdict (Spoiler)

GitHub Actions wastes less time if you’re already on GitHub and love marketplace “plug-and-play” actions.

GitLab CI wastes less time if you manage multiple projects or need advanced pipelines without juggling 15 different actions.

Where GitHub Actions Wastes Your Time

The Marketplace Maze

Need to set up Node? There are 400+ actions. Some are maintained, some aren’t. You’ll test three before finding one that works with your Node version.

Verbose Syntax

yaml

name: Checkout code

uses: actions/checkout@v4

name: Setup Node

uses: actions/setup-node@v4

with:

node-version: '18'

Every step needs a name and uses.…