What is SourceTree and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to SourceTree
- GitKraken
The downright luxurious Git client for Windows, Mac and Linux. Cross-platform, 100% standalone, and free. ...
- Bitbucket
Bitbucket gives teams one place to plan projects, collaborate on code, test and deploy, all with free private Git repositories. Teams choose Bitbucket because it has a superior Jira integration, built-in CI/CD, & is free for up to 5 users. ...
- Tower
Use all of Git's powerful feature set - in a GUI that makes you more productive. ...
- GitHub
GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over three million people use GitHub to build amazing things together. ...
- Fork
Manage your repositories without leaving the application. Organize the repositores into categories. Fork's Diff Viewer provides a clear view to spot the changes in your source code quickly. ...
- Git
Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. ...
- Sublime Merge
A snappy UI, three-way merge tool, side-by-side diffs, syntax highlighting, and more. Evaluate for free – no account, tracking, or time limits. ...
- SmartGit
It is a graphical Git client with support for SVN and Pull Requests for GitHub and Bitbucket. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. ...
SourceTree alternatives & related posts
- Dark theme59
- Best linux git client34
- Great overview29
- Full featured client21
- Gitflow support20
- Beautiful UI19
- Very easy to use18
- Graph16
- Works great on both linux and windows13
- Effortless13
- Easy Merge Conflict Tool6
- Amazing Github and Bitbucket integration5
- Great UX4
- Integration with GitHub3
- Automatic Repo Discovery3
- Submodule support3
- Easy to Learn and Setup3
- Super fast3
- Fuzzy find (CTRL P)2
- Very user friendly1
- Much more stable than source tree1
- Great for non-dev users1
- Because it has Linux client1
- Command palette (CTRL Shift P)1
- Extremely slow when working with large repositories3
- No edit/fixup in interactive rebase3
- Hangs occasionally (not as bad as sourcetree)3
- Not as many features as sourcetree2
- Do not allow to directly edit staging area2
- Does not work like a Mac app2
related GitKraken posts
Tower appears to be between GitKraken and SourceTree in detail, but gave two scary error dialogs when attempting to merge resulted in a conflict. Doing the same in SourceTree just worked and showed the conflict in its handy file view that's always visible (unlike Tower's mere "Merge branch 'X' into develop" message when the commit is selected).
Both GitKraken and Tower lack the commit hash in their history overview, requiring one to select a commit to see it.
GitKraken appears to be the only Windows 10 Git GUI suitable for night shifts, but like Tower is only free for 30 days, unlike SourceTree.
GitKraken is the best git client so far. The user interface is very friendly. Everything is easy to do with this tool. A branch tree vizualization is very clear. I've tried SourceTree and I got lost in such many panels. Also performance of SourceTree is not as goot as GitKraken. I like Sublime Merge but it doesn't have so many features as the other tools. I've choosen GitKraken and as bonus I got GitKraken Glo that is the next perfect tool.
Bitbucket
- Free private repos905
- Simple setup398
- Nice ui and tools347
- Unlimited private repositories341
- Affordable git hosting240
- Integrates with many apis and services123
- Reliable uptime119
- Nice gui86
- Pull requests and code reviews84
- Very customisable58
- Mercurial repositories16
- SourceTree integration14
- JIRA integration11
- Track every commit to an issue in JIRA10
- Best free alternative to Github8
- Deployment hooks8
- Compatible with Mac and Windows7
- Automatically share repositories with all your teammates7
- Source Code Insight6
- Login with Google5
- Price5
- Approve pull request button5
- Create a wiki5
- #2 Atlassian Product after JIRA4
- Customizable pipelines4
- Continuous Integration and Delivery3
- Also supports Mercurial3
- Unlimited Private Repos at no cost3
- IAM integration2
- Academic license program2
- Multilingual interface2
- Teamcity2
- Open source friendly2
- Issues tracker2
- IAM2
- Mercurial Support2
- Not much community activity19
- Difficult to review prs because of confusing ui17
- Quite buggy15
- Managed by enterprise Java company10
- CI tool is not free of charge8
- Complexity with rights management7
- Only 5 collaborators for private repos6
- Slow performance4
- No AWS Codepipelines integration2
- No more Mercurial repositories1
- No server side git-hook support1
related Bitbucket posts
I use GitLab when building side-projects and MVPs. The interface and interactions are close enough to those of GitHub to prevent cognitive switching costs between professional and personal projects hosted on different services.
GitLab also provides a suite of tools including issue/project management, CI/CD with GitLab CI, and validation/landing pages with GitLab Pages. With everything in one place, on an #OpenSourceCloud GitLab makes it easy for me to manage much larger projects on my own, than would be possible with other solutions or tools.
It's petty I know, but I can also read the GitLab code diffs far more easily than diffs on GitHub or Bitbucket...they just look better in my opinion.
A bit difference in GitHub and GitLab though both are Version Control repository management services which provides key component in the software development workflow. A decision of choosing GitHub over GitLab is major leap extension from code management, to deployment and monitoring alongside looking beyond the code base hosting provided best fitted tools for developer communities.
- Authentication stages - With GitLab you can set and modify people’s permissions according to their role. In GitHub, you can decide if someone gets a read or write access to a repository.
- Built-In Continuous Integrations - GitLab offers its very own CI for free. No need to use an external CI service. And if you are already used to an external CI, you can obviously integrate with Jenkins, etc whereas GitHub offers various 3rd party integrations – such as Travis CI, CircleCI or Codeship – for running and testing your code. However, there’s no built-in CI solution at the moment.
- Import/Export Resources - GitLab offers detailed documentation on how to import your data from other vendors – such as GitHub, Bitbucket to GitLab. GitHub, on the other hand, does not offer such detailed documentation for the most common git repositories. However, GitHub offers to use GitHub Importer if you have your source code in Subversion, Mercurial, TFS and others.
Also when it comes to exporting data, GitLab seems to do a pretty solid job, offering you the ability to export your projects including the following data:
- Wiki and project repositories
- Project uploads
- The configuration including webhooks and services
- Issues with comments, merge requests with diffs and comments, labels, milestones, snippets, and other project entities.
GitHub, on the other hand, seems to be more restrictive when it comes to export features of existing GitHub repositories. * Integrations - #githubmarketplace gives you an essence to have multiple and competitive integrations whereas you will find less in the GitLab.
So go ahead with better understanding.
- Git19
- Just works16
- Version control10
- Awesome6
- Simple layout6
- Multiple windows4
- Multiple tabs3
- Automatic repo discovery3
- Gitflow support2
- Uses standard git terminology and methods2
- Submodule support2
- Interactive stage or discard by hunks or lines2
- Github integration2
- Full featured client2
- SAS1
- Expensive5
- Subscription based4
- No side by side diff1
- Merge conflict resolution impossible/unclear0
related Tower posts
Tower appears to be between GitKraken and SourceTree in detail, but gave two scary error dialogs when attempting to merge resulted in a conflict. Doing the same in SourceTree just worked and showed the conflict in its handy file view that's always visible (unlike Tower's mere "Merge branch 'X' into develop" message when the commit is selected).
Both GitKraken and Tower lack the commit hash in their history overview, requiring one to select a commit to see it.
GitKraken appears to be the only Windows 10 Git GUI suitable for night shifts, but like Tower is only free for 30 days, unlike SourceTree.
GitHub
- Open source friendly1.8K
- Easy source control1.5K
- Nice UI1.3K
- Great for team collaboration1.1K
- Easy setup864
- Issue tracker503
- Great community484
- Remote team collaboration480
- Great way to share450
- Pull request and features planning441
- Just works145
- Integrated in many tools131
- Free Public Repos119
- Github Gists114
- Github pages110
- Easy to find repos82
- Open source61
- Easy to find projects59
- It's free59
- Network effect56
- Extensive API48
- Organizations42
- Branching41
- Developer Profiles33
- Git Powered Wikis32
- Great for collaboration29
- It's fun23
- Community SDK involvement22
- Clean interface and good integrations22
- Learn from others source code19
- Because: Git15
- It integrates directly with Azure14
- Standard in Open Source collab9
- Newsfeed9
- It integrates directly with Hipchat8
- Fast7
- Beautiful user experience7
- Cloud SCM6
- Easy to discover new code libraries6
- Smooth integration5
- It's awesome5
- Integrations5
- Graphs5
- Nice API5
- Quick Onboarding4
- Remarkable uptime4
- Hands down best online Git service available4
- CI Integration4
- Reliable4
- Loved by developers3
- Free HTML hosting3
- Security options3
- Simple but powerful3
- Uses GIT3
- Unlimited Public Repos at no cost3
- Version Control3
- Easy to use and collaborate with others3
- Nice to use2
- IAM2
- Ci2
- Easy and efficient maintainance of the projects1
- Good tools support1
- Beautiful1
- Free HTML hostings1
- Self Hosted1
- All in one development service1
- Easy to use1
- Easy source control and everything is backed up1
- Leads the copycats1
- Never dethroned1
- IAM integration1
- Issues tracker1
- Very Easy to Use1
- Easy deployment via SSH1
- Free private repos1
- Profound0
- Owned by micrcosoft53
- Expensive for lone developers that want private repos37
- Relatively slow product/feature release cadence15
- API scoping could be better10
- Only 3 collaborators for private repos8
- Limited featureset for issue management3
- GitHub Packages does not support SNAPSHOT versions2
- Does not have a graph for showing history like git lens2
- Have to use a token for the package registry1
- No multilingual interface1
- Takes a long time to commit1
related GitHub posts
I was building a personal project that I needed to store items in a real time database. I am more comfortable with my Frontend skills than my backend so I didn't want to spend time building out anything in Ruby or Go.
I stumbled on Firebase by #Google, and it was really all I needed. It had realtime data, an area for storing file uploads and best of all for the amount of data I needed it was free!
I built out my application using tools I was familiar with, React for the framework, Redux.js to manage my state across components, and styled-components for the styling.
Now as this was a project I was just working on in my free time for fun I didn't really want to pay for hosting. I did some research and I found Netlify. I had actually seen them at #ReactRally the year before and deployed a Gatsby site to Netlify already.
Netlify was very easy to setup and link to my GitHub account you select a repo and pretty much with very little configuration you have a live site that will deploy every time you push to master.
With the selection of these tools I was able to build out my application, connect it to a realtime database, and deploy to a live environment all with $0 spent.
If you're looking to build out a small app I suggest giving these tools a go as you can get your idea out into the real world for absolutely no cost.
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)
The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:
- Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
- Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
- Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
- Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
- Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
- Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
- One of the easiest and fastest git GUIs18
- Nice UX13
- Does the job way better than others12
- Fast, Great support, Does-it-all, blazing fast12
- Dark theme10
- Intuitive interactive rebase and conflict resolution UI9
- Gitflow support9
- Excellent commit history tree view7
- This even looks the same as SourceTree5
- Repository Manager4
- Countless quality of life features3
- Built-in developer feedback3
- Not buggy, works smoothly2
- Keyaboard-only2
- Visual branch history2
- Reflog support2
- Github Notifications2
- Git ammend1
- Smart 'Open in' menu; e.g. explorer, bit, giithub .1
- Native application1
- Interactive rebase window1
- Intuitive merge conflict resolution1
- Unique Activity Manager shows current/past operations1
- Stability is fragile when looking deeply into history1
- Merges that require interactive user decision1
- Poorly written license1
related Fork posts
- Distributed version control system1.4K
- Efficient branching and merging1.1K
- Fast960
- Open source845
- Better than svn726
- Great command-line application368
- Simple306
- Free291
- Easy to use232
- Does not require server222
- Distributed27
- Small & Fast22
- Feature based workflow18
- Staging Area15
- Most wide-spread VSC13
- Role-based codelines11
- Disposable Experimentation11
- Frictionless Context Switching7
- Data Assurance6
- Efficient5
- Just awesome4
- Github integration3
- Easy branching and merging3
- Compatible2
- Flexible2
- Possible to lose history and commits2
- Rebase supported natively; reflog; access to plumbing1
- Light1
- Team Integration1
- Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system1
- Easy1
- Flexible, easy, Safe, and fast1
- CLI is great, but the GUI tools are awesome1
- It's what you do1
- Phinx0
- Hard to learn16
- Inconsistent command line interface11
- Easy to lose uncommitted work9
- Worst documentation ever possibly made7
- Awful merge handling5
- Unexistent preventive security flows3
- Rebase hell3
- When --force is disabled, cannot rebase2
- Ironically even die-hard supporters screw up badly2
related Git posts
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)
The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:
- Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
- Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
- Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
- Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
- Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
- Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
Application and Data: Since my personal website ( https://alisoueidan.com ) is a SPA I've chosen to use Vue.js, as a framework to create it. After a short skeptical phase I immediately felt in love with the single file component concept! I also used vuex for state management, which makes working with several components, which are communicating with each other even more fun and convenient to use. Of course, using Vue requires using JavaScript as well, since it is the basis of it.
For markup and style, I used Pug and Sass, since they’re the perfect match to me. I love the clean and strict syntax of both of them and even more that their structure is almost similar. Also, both of them come with an expanded functionality such as mixins, loops and so on related to their “siblings” (HTML and CSS). Both of them require nesting and prevent untidy code, which can be a huge advantage when working in teams. I used JSON to store data (since the data quantity on my website is moderate) – JSON works also good in combo with Pug, using for loops, based on the JSON Objects for example.
To send my contact form I used PHP, since sending emails using PHP is still relatively convenient, simple and easy done.
DevOps: Of course, I used Git to do my version management (which I even do in smaller projects like my website just have an additional backup of my code). On top of that I used GitHub since it now supports private repository for free accounts (which I am using for my own). I use Babel to use ES6 functionality such as arrow functions and so on, and still don’t losing cross browser compatibility.
Side note: I used npm for package management. 🎉
*Business Tools: * I use Asana to organize my project. This is a big advantage to me, even if I work alone, since “private” projects can get interrupted for some time. By using Asana I still know (even after month of not touching a project) what I’ve done, on which task I was at last working on and what still is to do. Working in Teams (for enterprise I’d take on Jira instead) of course Asana is a Tool which I really love to use as well. All the graphics on my website are SVG which I have created with Adobe Illustrator and adjusted within the SVG code or by using JavaScript or CSS (SASS).
- Speed11
- Hotkeys5
- Beautify UI5
- Command Palete4
- Blame and File History3
- Submodule Management3
- Command Line Integration3
- Commit Editing3
- Outputs matching git CLI command3
- Sublime Text Integration3
- Three-Way Merge3
- Only light mode available for evaluation2
related Sublime Merge posts





We use Visual Studio Code because it allows us to easily and quickly integrate with Git, much like Sublime Merge ,but it is integrated into the IDE. Another cool part about VS Code is the ability collaborate with each other with Visual Studio Live Share which allows our whole team to get more done together. It brings the convenience of the Google Suite to programming, offering something that works more smoothly than anything found on Atom or Sublime Text
GitKraken is the best git client so far. The user interface is very friendly. Everything is easy to do with this tool. A branch tree vizualization is very clear. I've tried SourceTree and I got lost in such many panels. Also performance of SourceTree is not as goot as GitKraken. I like Sublime Merge but it doesn't have so many features as the other tools. I've choosen GitKraken and as bonus I got GitKraken Glo that is the next perfect tool.