How to Cancel GitLab Premium/Ultimate (2026 Guide)

Updated February 2026 · Downgrade to free without losing your code

What You're Paying (2026 Pricing)

• Free: $0 — unlimited repos, 5 users on private, 400 CI minutes
• Premium: $29/user/month — code review, CI/CD management, security scanning
• Ultimate: $99/user/month — full DevSecOps, compliance, portfolio management

For a team of 10 on Premium, that's $290/month or $3,480/year. Worth auditing whether you actually use the paid features.

Before You Cancel: Check What You'll Lose

Key features you lose on Free tier:

• Multiple merge request approvers (Free allows 0 required)
• Code owners for merge requests
• Epics and roadmaps (project management)
• CI/CD minutes drop from 10,000 to 400/month
• Storage drops from 50GB to 5GB per project
• Security scanning (SAST, DAST, dependency scanning)

How to Cancel GitLab Premium/Ultimate

GitLab.com (SaaS)

1. Go to gitlab.com/-/subscriptions
2. Sign in as the group/namespace owner
3. Find your active subscription
4. Click Cancel subscription or Don't renew
5. Your paid features remain active until the end of the billing period
6. After expiry, your namespace downgrades to Free automatically

GitLab Self-Managed

1. Go to customers.gitlab.com
2. Sign in with your GitLab Customers Portal account
3. Find your subscription and click Cancel or turn off auto-renewal
4. When the license expires, your instance reverts to the free (Community Edition) feature set
5. Your data and repos remain — only paid features are disabled

Export Your Data (Optional Backup)

If you want to migrate away from GitLab entirely:

• Git clone: git clone --mirror each repo for a full backup
• Project export: Settings → General → Advanced → Export project (includes issues, MRs, wiki)
• GitHub import: GitHub has a built-in GitLab importer at github.com/new/import

Free Alternatives

• GitLab Free: Stay on GitLab — most teams don't need Premium features
• GitHub Free: Unlimited private repos, 2,000 CI/CD minutes, larger community
• Bitbucket Free: Up to 5 users, Jira integration if you're in the Atlassian ecosystem
• Gitea/Forgejo: Self-hosted, open source, zero cost