to the 
Slant community chat on Discourse| 16 Recommended Products | Recommendations | Platforms | Price | Pro Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 SmartGit· · · | 16 | 3 | Linux, Mac, Windows | $79-$47.40/user (perpetual) or $5.99-$3.59/user (monthly subscription) | Conflict Solver and Compare (freely editable); Pull Requests, Comments for BitBucket, GitHub and provider independent (Distributed Review add-on); Git-Flow; highly configurable views, external tools |
| #2 GitKraken· · · | 75 | 21 | Windows, Mac, Linux | Free / $49 per yr / $39-$25 per yr (teams) / $79 per yr (offline) | Support, Merge Conflict Editor, Multiple Profiles, GitHub Enterprise Integration, Commercial Use, Offline License Server |
| #3 SourceTree· · · | 62 | 27 | Windows, macOS | Free | – |
| #4 Git Extensions· · · | 11 | 1 | Windows, Linux, MacOS | – | – |
| #5 Magit· · · | 8 | 0 | Any supported by Emacs (Linux, Windows,macOS,*BSD...) | – | – |
| #6 Tower· · · | 18 | 6 | Windows, Mac | – | – |
Pro Gratis for non-commercial use
SmartGit may be used for no cost, so long as it is used only for non-commercial projects, or for a 30 day trial period.
Pro Clean UI
SmartGit has a rather clean and uncluttered user interface. All the most useful tools and information are displayed at all times or are otherwise just a couple of clicks away. All repositories are displayed in the sidebar and through a tabbed interface you can view various info about a specific re...
Pro In-client merge resolution
No more need for kDiff or another external client. Every commit comes with a clean view of the merge, and the same UI is used for merge-conflicts.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed.
Con Irritating starting screen
Start Screen gets on top of all and every window open until SmartGit opens up, which takes some time.
Con Auto clean up consumes a lot of resources
Leaving SmartGit idle for some time will start project clean up, consuming a lot of pc processing power, making it completely unusable until it finishes. It can be disabled from the options menu, but should be disabled by default.
Pro Beautiful user interface
It's modern and beautiful, it looks clean and refined. It's simple: the most used features (pull, push, branch, stash, commit) are accessible in one click, and are the only buttons. The other features aren't in complicated menus nor in hundreds of buttons, but rather displayed when you...
Pro Cross-platform
Built on top of Electron, so it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Con Has memory-related issues
Like most Electron apps, GitKraken has some memory-related issues. For starter, it requires more memory for an action than an equivalent non-Electron application. Although this should not be a problem most of the time for people who use machines with lots of RAM (after all, RAM is pretty cheap nowa...
Con Must log into GitKraken servers to use the free version
All functionality is disabled unless you register for a free account and remain logged in. There is the $79/user/yr Enterprise option. It allows you to deploy a Linux License Server in an air-gapped/offline environment.
Pro Informative branch visualisation
In addition to color-coded branches and icons that tell if a file has been added, removed or modified, Sourcetree also displays the number of commits that are ahead and behind remote repo.
Pro Gratis
No cost to use without registration. After 30 days, it requires registration (which is also costs nothing).
Con No Linux version
There's no Linux version available.
Con Does not support offline usage
As of 2.0.20.1, it now does a dial-home on each start-up. If you're working on air-gapped networks for security and compliance requirements, SourceTree is a no-no.
Pro Free/libre
This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed.
Con Poor UI
Rich developer experience but awful interface.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Pretty, modern-looking user interface
T2 has a good-looking interface and consists of 3 main views - services, repositories and repository. Services view for managing integrations with hosting services like GitHub, Bitbucket and Beanstalk. Repositories view for organizing local and remote repositories into folders and getti...
Pro Offers a visual way to solve conflicts
T2 shows conflicting files, their authors and the commit that made changes. It then allows selecting which files should be used in the final result.
Con Stability issues on Windows
On a simple repository, the UI often lags or freezes.
Con Expensive
Costs $79 USD.
Pro A truly visual interface to git repos
It's a radical departure from the other apps which all more-or-less just throw all the git actions into menus. GitUp is a visual editor for repos, branches, and commits. One can select and move commits with intuitive gestures.
Pro Open source
Licensed under GPL.
Pro Windows context menu integration
Context menu enables access to common commands quickly.
Con Renames git commands
Makes things hard to find for people used to the git CLI.
Con Windows only
No Linux or OSX versions available.
Pro Simple, streamlined GUI
GitHub Desktop uses an extremely simplistic two-panel view. It's not capable of complex historical visualisations like other GUIs, but it is very easy to use (especially for git novices).
Pro Supports pull requests
In addition to being able to seamlessly and easily integrate with all of GitHub's features, it also supports forking and submitting pull requests on any open source project hosted on GitHub.
Con Limited
Can't handle complex tasks. The Help Manual advises to use command-line Git instead.
Con Incomplete feature set
For e.g. Cannot do re-base, cherry-pick, commit chunks, stash.
Pro Crossplatform
Works on Linux, Mac and Windows
Pro Very fast
Unlike Source Tree git-cola still works great even with a huge code base and a lot of changes.
Con Limited feature set
You sometimes need to touch the terminal in order to get certain things done.
Pro Free and Open Source Software
Ungit is open source software available under the MIT Licence.
Pro Cross-platform
Works on Windows, Linux, and OS X.
Con Exposes git commands to your network
No authentication, if someone can communicate with your computer on the port this is running on, they can execute any git command they want on your repos as well as view your filesystem's folders.
Con Setup is not user-friendly
Ungit is distributed as an NPM package and requires git and Node.js to be installed on your system before you can run it. Ungit must be launched by running ungit in a command line terminal.
Pro Free/libre
This application is FOSS, and thus it can be freely modified & distributed.
Pro Runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux
Uses the Electron framework, which is heavyweight but very consistent across platforms.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Option marked as FlaggedComments
Welcome to the Slant Community
Stop spending hours researching
Slant is written by a community helping you be informed. Let us know what you’re passionate about to get an awesome personalized feed.