Method: Official documentation and pricing checked September 28, 2026. No benchmarks were run. Recommendations are based on documented features and billing, not hands-on results.
For a new pipeline, evaluate GitLab CI/CD as a currently offered platform. Treat an existing Earthly setup as a maintenance and migration decision. The original comparison’s assumption that both hosted services remain available is no longer supportable.
The status change that matters
Earthly’s announcement set July 16, 2025 as the shutdown date for Earthly Cloud, including Satellites. It also announced the end of active maintenance of the open-source project. The current documentation repeats the maintenance warning.
Some older documentation still describes Cloud signup and free features. The explicit shutdown notice takes precedence over those historical instructions. Do not budget a new deployment around a former Satellite subscription or free tier.
These tools occupied different layers
Earthly’s repository describes container-based build definitions that can run locally or on top of CI systems, including GitLab. GitLab CI/CD provides pipelines and runners. They were not exact substitutes: a GitLab pipeline could invoke Earthly for build logic.
That distinction still matters when replacing an existing setup. Identify which parts are pipeline scheduling, build definitions, runner infrastructure, cache, secrets and logs. A migration needs a replacement for each dependency, not simply a new YAML file.
GitLab.com costs checked today
GitLab pricing lists Free with 400 compute minutes/month and a five-user limit for private top-level groups. Premium is $29/user/month, billed annually, with 10,000 compute minutes/month. The compute allowance belongs to the group; it is not multiplied by the number of seats.
GitLab lists additional compute at $10 per 1,000 minutes. Jobs on your own runners do not consume the hosted allowance, but your runner infrastructure still costs money. Confirm the runner type and usage calculation before estimating a bill.
Recommendation for existing Earthly users
Inventory Earthfiles and all dependencies on discontinued cloud features. First establish how to reproduce artifacts with the local tooling and infrastructure you control. Then evaluate a maintained build approach for the future. Earthly’s notice identifies Dagger as a migration option and explicitly says it is not a drop-in Earthfile replacement.
For a new GitLab project, begin with the native CI documentation and a minimal pipeline. Evaluate another build abstraction only if it solves a demonstrated portability or reuse problem. No timing result here establishes that adding one will make the build faster.
Acceptance checks
Compare artifact contents, secret handling, cache behavior and recovery after a failed job. Keep a rollback plan for the pipeline configuration. These are proposed checks, not a claim of a completed migration or measured cost saving.
Sources, checked September 28, 2026: Earthly shutdown announcement, Earthly docs, Earthly repository, GitLab CI, GitLab prices.