The Difference Between Git, GitHub, GitLab (And Others)

Posted by Daniel Wachtel in Basics, last updated on 20 June, 2021

Introduction

When you first start programming you’ll often hear that you should always version control your code.

You’ll also hear words thrown around such as Git, GitHub, GitLab and similar services.

If you’re not sure what the difference is I’ll be breaking it down in this post, but first a high level overview of the difference between them:

Git is an open source distributed version control system (DVCS) that allows developers to work on the same project from anywhere and even if they’re offline. GitHub, GitLab and their alternatives are cloud services that provide remote hosting of Git repositories, as well as features such as task management, wikis, CI and more.

Let’s break it down further.

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