Git vs GitHub: the difference explained, plus GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps

Git vs GitHub comes down to one sentence: Git is the version control tool that records every change to your project on your own computer, and GitHub is a website that stores copies of Git repositories online so people can share them, review each other’s changes and run automated checks. You can use Git without GitHub, but GitHub is built on Git. Put simply, Git is the program, and GitHub is one of several services where you can keep what the program produces.

This guide shows which commands are Git and which part is GitHub, compares GitHub with GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps, and explains how a desktop Git client connects to all four. A short disclosure: GitTree’s maker wrote it, and GitTree is one of the clients it mentions. Facts about the other services come from their official pages, listed at the end.

The difference between Git and GitHub

Git describes itself as a free and open source distributed version control system. Linus Torvalds and the Linux kernel community created it in 2005, after they lost free access to the version control tool they had been using. “Distributed” means every copy of a repository holds the full history, so you can commit, branch, compare and undo with no network connection at all.

What is Git, and what does it do on your computer?

When you run git init in a folder, Git creates a hidden .git directory next to your files. From then on it can:

• Record snapshots of your project, called commits, each with a message, an author and a date.
• Keep separate lines of work on branches, so a new feature can grow without touching the version that works.
• Merge branches back together and show you exactly what changed between any two points in history.
• Take you back to any earlier commit when something breaks.

None of this needs an account, a website or the internet. Git is a command-line program first; desktop Git clients put a window on top of it.

What GitHub adds online

GitHub’s own documentation says it builds on Git by hosting your Git repositories in the cloud and adding planning and collaboration tools. In practice a GitHub repository is a copy of your Git repository on GitHub’s servers, plus everything a team needs around it:

• Remote hosting: a shared copy, public or private, that everyone pushes to and pulls from.
• Pull requests: proposals to merge a branch, with the diff, comments and approvals in one place.
• Issues and Projects for tracking bugs and planned work.
• GitHub Actions, a CI/CD platform that builds, tests and deploys your code.
• Access control over who can read, push or merge.

Git vs GitHub at a glance

What is GitHub, and why do developers use it?

Because so many tutorials start with GitHub, the two names often get mixed up. GitHub is a service, and people use it for three main reasons:

• A backup and a meeting point. Your laptop can fail; the copy on GitHub stays. Every teammate clones from the same place and pushes back to it.
• Code review. A pull request lets others read the diff, comment on single lines and approve a change before it reaches main.
• Automation and sharing. GitHub Actions can run your tests on every push, and a public repository lets anyone read, fork and contribute to an open source project.

GitHub has been part of Microsoft since October 2018. Its free and paid plans appear in the comparison table further down, and GitHub’s pricing page has the current limits.

Git and GitHub explained with one real workflow

The clearest way to see where Git ends and GitHub begins is to put a new project online. These are the commands GitHub’s documentation gives for adding a local project to a new, empty GitHub repository:

git init -b main
git add .
git commit -m "First commit"
git remote add origin https://github.com/your-name/your-project.git
git push -u origin main

1. git init -b main turns the folder into a Git repository whose first branch is called main. Git only.
2. git add . and git commit record the first snapshot. Still Git only, still offline.
3. git remote add origin … saves the address of the GitHub repository under the short name origin. This is a Git command; GitHub is only the address.
4. git push -u origin main sends your commits to GitHub and remembers origin/main as the branch to sync with. This is the first step that needs the network and a GitHub login.

From then on the daily loop is Git on your machine (edit, git add, git commit), git push to share your work and git pull to bring in your teammates’ work. The pull request, the review and the CI run happen on GitHub’s website, and afterwards everyone pulls the merged result.

GitHub vs GitLab vs Bitbucket vs Azure DevOps

Three other services host Git repositories for many teams. All four store standard Git repositories, offer a free plan, let you review changes before they merge and run CI pipelines. They differ in who makes them, what they call a review, and how they fit the tools your team already uses.

GitLab

GitLab calls its review step a merge request: a central place to review code, discuss it and track changes. CI/CD is built in, and GitLab runs either on GitLab.com, hosted by GitLab, or as a self-managed instance on your own servers, which suits teams that must keep their code in-house.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket is Atlassian’s Git host, and Atlassian puts its connection to Jira front and centre. Reviews are pull requests, CI runs on Bitbucket Pipelines, and it comes as Bitbucket Cloud or as the self-managed Bitbucket Data Center. Atlassian’s Data Center end-of-life notice says Bitbucket Data Center will not be retired, but since March 30, 2026 new customers can no longer buy Data Center subscriptions; existing customers can carry on through a Bitbucket Hybrid License.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is Microsoft’s suite for planning, code, builds and testing: Azure Boards, Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Test Plans and Azure Artifacts. Azure Repos hosts Git repositories and, for teams that still use it, Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC). Microsoft’s documentation states plainly that Git in Azure DevOps is standard Git. It runs as the cloud service Azure DevOps Services or on premises as Azure DevOps Server.

Which one should you pick? Usually the choice follows the tools around it rather than Git itself: Jira users often pick Bitbucket, teams that want one self-hosted platform look at GitLab, companies already on Microsoft’s developer tools tend to have Azure DevOps, and many open source projects live on GitHub. Your Git skills carry over to all four.

How a desktop Git client connects to GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps

A desktop Git client is a graphical window on top of Git. It talks to a hosting service in two separate ways, and knowing which is which explains most connection problems:

• Plain Git over HTTPS or SSH. Clone, fetch, pull and push are ordinary Git operations that work with any host, self-hosted servers included, once you authenticate with a token or credential manager (HTTPS) or an SSH key added to your account.
• The service’s API, after you sign in. Listing your repositories, opening a pull request or re-running a failed CI check are not Git features; a client needs a dedicated integration with each service for them.

GitHub’s own desktop client, GitHub Desktop, is free and open source and works with GitHub or other Git hosts; as of October 2026 it runs on macOS and Windows only, with no Linux version. That gap is why we wrote a guide to GitHub Desktop on Linux and a page on GitTree as a GitHub Desktop alternative.

How GitTree connects to each service

GitTree works through the Git already installed on your computer (version 2.39 or newer): every clone, fetch, pull and push runs through it, so any remote works over HTTPS or SSH, including hosts with no dedicated integration. On top of that, GitTree has integrations for the four services in this guide:

• GitHub, including GitHub Enterprise Server.
• GitLab, both gitlab.com and self-managed instances.
• Bitbucket, both Bitbucket Cloud and Bitbucket Data Center.
• Azure DevOps, the cloud service (Azure DevOps Services).

Once you connect an account you can browse and clone your repositories without copying a URL; list, create, review, comment on and merge pull or merge requests; see CI check results and re-run them on GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Bitbucket Pipelines and Azure Pipelines build validation; and follow open pull requests across all your repositories in one dashboard. GitHub and Bitbucket Cloud support is the most mature; GitLab, Azure DevOps, GitHub Enterprise Server and Bitbucket Data Center support is new. Tokens stay in your operating system’s secure credential store, and GitTree can generate an SSH key, test it and upload it to GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket for you.

Do you need Git, GitHub, or both?

• Learning alone, or a project on one computer: Git is enough. Add a host later, when you want a backup.
• A backup or a second computer: Git plus any host with free private repositories.
• A team: Git on every machine, plus whichever host the team has chosen. The commands are the same everywhere.
• Contributing to open source: Git plus an account on the host where the project lives, which is often GitHub.

Whatever you choose, you will spend most of your time in Git itself: committing, branching and merging. If the terminal still feels unfamiliar, our Git for beginners guide walks through those basics in a GUI, and Git GUI vs command line helps you decide how you want to work.

GitTree is free today, private repositories included; it needs a free account and Git 2.39 or newer. Compare it with other apps in our round-up of the best Git GUI clients, or read the install notes for Mac, Windows and Linux.