When comparing GitHub Desktop vs Sublime Merge, the Slant community recommends Sublime Merge for most people. In the question“What are the best Git clients for Windows?” Sublime Merge is ranked 8th while GitHub Desktop is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Sublime Merge is:
All actions are real Git actions which minimizes confusion and makes it perfect for beginners and professionals alike.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Great GitHub integration
This is the official GitHub desktop client built by the GitHub team.
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.
Pro Pure Git behind the scenes
All actions are real Git actions which minimizes confusion and makes it perfect for beginners and professionals alike.
Pro Speed
Nothing is faster. I used to use Gitkraken, but on large projects Gitkraken is barely usable.
Pro Very keyboard friendly
All actions have either direct hotkeys or corresponding entries in the palette (same as Sublime Text). This means a very streamlined and fast usage.
Pro No account info needed
No account- or server checkbacks (only for updates). All password handling is pure Git which means much less trouble and confusion.
Pro Portable version
Windows portable version.
Pro "Native" performance (Python based)
Very good performance.
Pro Using the trial version forever without limitations
Sublime Merge may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however, a license must be purchased for continued use. There is no enforced time limit for the evaluation.
Pro Lifetime testing
The product is paid but you can test for your life without paying (similar to sublime text).
Pro Excellent user interface
The user interface is designed excellently, and it's really fast to navigate with mouse or keyboard. It's never obscured which git commands are used, and commands can be modified/extended if desired. The visual appearance of the interface can be changed via themes, new git commands can be added, and even the menus can be extended.
Pro Not subscription based
A license gives you 3 years of updates, and you can use the product after that indefinitely.
Pro Bundled license available with Sublime Text (which is an amazing text editor)
Cons
Con Limited
Can't handle complex tasks. The Help Manual advises to use command-line Git instead.
Con Does not support multiple Remotes for a repo
Only allowed to assign one URL as remote. To manage/sync/fetch other remotes, use command-line Git instead.
Con Overly Simplified UI
UI that is designed not to support the needs of power and enterprise users. Management of more than five repos is next to impossible.
Con Buggy
Poster child for authors' programming ideology (FRP), likely the cause for the odd quirks and bugs it has.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed.
Con No Linux support
There's no Linux version of this client.
Con Non-GitHub repositories are not fully supported
Since this is mainly a GitHub client, other repositories are not fully supported and with as many features and setting up a repo hosted anywhere else but GitHub is troublesome.
Con Too expensive
And they're continuing to increase the price over the time, from the $60 that was at the start.