GitHub Codespaces vs GitPod: Which is Better?¶

My long wait for using GitHub Codespaces is finally over. I have used GitPod in the past, and I am using their Open Source plan giving me 50 hours a month for free. You can see all the GitPod offerings or plans here..

GitHub Codespaces, on the other hand, is not free and the cheapest option is US$0.18 per hour while using and US$0.07 per GiB per month for storage (only charged when inactive). The smallest unit (2x Core with 4GB RAM) appears to have 32GB storage mounted of which about 18GB is available for your project. How much of this is actually used for billing is unclear for me.

Here is a quick comparison between my entry level GitPod (free) addition and GitHub Codespaces:

Feature	GitPoD	Github Codespaces
Current Plan	Open Source	4 Core
CPU Core Count	16	4
RAM	64	8
Free Disk Space	28	18
Operating System	Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS	Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
Cost for first 50 hours	Free	US$18
Idle Cost for the rest of the month	NILL	46.90 (670 hours, for 1 GiB)

To put the costs in perspective, GitPod Unlimited (the highest tier) is only US$35 and gives you up to 16 parallel workspaces. The only thing GitHub Codespaces has going for it, in my opinion, is it's integration with the rest of the GitHub environment, like secrets. So, for individuals, freelancers and such, GitPod seems to be the better option. GitHub Codespaces is probably better suited for the Enterprise - but it all will depend on your use cases.

Personally, I use GitPod when I'm mobile and when I only have my iPad Air with me. It works great, but honestly, it's not the desktop experience on such a small device. So for my occasional work, the GitPod option is still by far the best option. You really get a lot of bang for buck!

Additional resources¶

Video from Alex Ziskind with his initial impressions of GitHub Codespaces

Video from Viktor Farcic & Darin Pope on GitPod

Tags¶

github, cloud. vscode, ide