Permissions

Users have different abilities depending on the access level they have in a particular group or project. If a user is both in a group's project and the project itself, the highest permission level is used.

On public and internal projects the Guest role is not enforced. All users will be able to create issues, leave comments, and clone or download the project code.

When a member leaves a team's project, all the assigned Issues and Merge Requests will be unassigned automatically.

GitLab administrators receive all permissions.

To add or import a user, you can follow the project members documentation.

For information on eligible approvers for Merge Requests, see Eligible approvers.

Principles behind permissions

See our product handbook on permissions

Instance-wide user permissions

By default, users can create top-level groups and change their usernames. A GitLab administrator can configure the GitLab instance to modify this behavior.

Project members permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

The following table depicts the various user permission levels in a project.

Action Guest Reporter Developer Maintainer Owner
Download project ✓ (1)
Leave comments ✓ (1)
View Insights charts (ULTIMATE)
View approved/blacklisted licenses (ULTIMATE)
View License Compliance reports (ULTIMATE) ✓ (1)
View Security reports (ULTIMATE) ✓ (1)
View Dependency list (ULTIMATE) ✓ (1)
View Design Management pages (PREMIUM) ✓ (1)
View project code ✓ (1)
Pull project code ✓ (1)
View GitLab Pages protected by access control
View wiki pages ✓ (1)
See a list of jobs ✓ (3)
See a job log ✓ (3)
Download and browse job artifacts ✓ (3)
Create new issue ✓ (1)
See related issues
Create confidential issue ✓ (1)
View confidential issues (2)
Assign issues
Label issues
Lock issue threads
Manage issue tracker
Manage related issues (STARTER)
Manage labels
Create code snippets
See a commit status
See a container registry
See environments
See a list of merge requests
View project statistics
View Error Tracking list
Pull from Maven repository or NPM registry (PREMIUM)
Publish to Maven repository or NPM registry (PREMIUM)
Upload Design Management files (PREMIUM)
Create new branches
Push to non-protected branches
Force push to non-protected branches
Remove non-protected branches
Create new merge request
Assign merge requests
Label merge requests
Lock merge request threads
Manage/Accept merge requests
Create new environments
Stop environments
Add tags
Cancel and retry jobs
Create or update commit status
Update a container registry
Remove a container registry image
Create/edit/delete project milestones
Use security dashboard (ULTIMATE)
View vulnerabilities in Dependency list (ULTIMATE)
Create issue from vulnerability (ULTIMATE)
Dismiss vulnerability (ULTIMATE)
Apply code change suggestions
Create and edit wiki pages
Rewrite/remove Git tags
Use environment terminals
Run Web IDE's Interactive Web Terminals (ULTIMATE ONLY)
Add new team members
Enable/disable branch protection
Push to protected branches
Turn on/off protected branch push for devs
Enable/disable tag protections
Edit project
Add deploy keys to project
Configure project hooks
Manage Runners
Manage job triggers
Manage variables
Manage GitLab Pages
Manage GitLab Pages domains and certificates
Remove GitLab Pages
Manage clusters
Manage license policy (ULTIMATE)
Edit comments (posted by any user)
Manage Error Tracking
Delete wiki pages
View project Audit Events
Switch visibility level
Transfer project to another namespace
Remove project
Delete issues
Disable notification emails
Force push to protected branches (4)
Remove protected branches (4)
  • (1): All users are able to perform this action on public and internal projects, but not private projects.
  • (2): Guest users can only view the confidential issues they created themselves
  • (3): If Public pipelines is enabled in Project Settings > CI/CD
  • (4): Not allowed for Guest, Reporter, Developer, Maintainer, or Owner

Project features permissions

Wiki and issues

Project features like wiki and issues can be hidden from users depending on which visibility level you select on project settings.

  • Disabled: disabled for everyone
  • Only team members: only team members will see even if your project is public or internal
  • Everyone with access: everyone can see depending on your project visibility level
  • Everyone: enabled for everyone (only available for GitLab Pages)

Protected branches

To prevent people from messing with history or pushing code without review, we've created protected branches. Read through the documentation on protected branches to learn more.

Additionally, you can allow or forbid users with Maintainer and/or Developer permissions to push to a protected branch. Read through the documentation on Allowed to Merge and Allowed to Push settings to learn more.

Cycle Analytics permissions

Find the current permissions on the Cycle Analytics dashboard on the documentation on Cycle Analytics permissions.

Issue Board permissions

Developers and users with higher permission level can use all the functionality of the Issue Board, that is create/delete lists and drag issues around. Read though the documentation on Issue Boards permissions to learn more.

File Locking permissions (PREMIUM)

The user that locks a file or directory is the only one that can edit and push their changes back to the repository where the locked objects are located.

Read through the documentation on permissions for File Locking to learn more.

Confidential Issues permissions

Confidential issues can be accessed by reporters and higher permission levels, as well as by guest users that create a confidential issue. To learn more, read through the documentation on permissions and access to confidential issues.

Releases permissions

Project Releases can be read by project members with Reporter, Developer, Maintainer, and Owner permissions. Guest users can access Release pages for downloading assets but are not allowed to download the source code nor see repository information such as tags and commits.

Releases can be created, updated, or deleted via Releases APIs by project Developers, Maintainers, and Owners.

Group members permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

Any user can remove themselves from a group, unless they are the last Owner of the group. The following table depicts the various user permission levels in a group.

Action Guest Reporter Developer Maintainer Owner
Browse group
View Insights charts (ULTIMATE)
View group epic (ULTIMATE)
Create/edit group epic (ULTIMATE)
Manage group labels
Create project in group
Create/edit/delete group milestones
Enable/disable a dependency proxy (PREMIUM)
Use security dashboard (ULTIMATE)
Create subgroup ✓ (1)
Edit group
Manage group members
Remove group
Delete group epic (ULTIMATE)
View group Audit Events
Disable notification emails

Subgroup permissions

When you add a member to a subgroup, they inherit the membership and permission level from the parent group. This model allows access to nested groups if you have membership in one of its parents.

To learn more, read through the documentation on subgroups memberships.

Guest User

When a user is given Guest permissions on a project and/or group, and holds no higher permission level on any other project or group on the instance, the user is considered a guest user by GitLab and will not consume a license seat. There is no other specific "guest" designation for newly created users.

If the user is assigned a higher role on any projects or groups, the user will take a license seat. If a user creates a project, the user becomes a Maintainer on the project, resulting in the use of a license seat. To prevent a guest user from creating projects, you can edit the user profile to mark the user as External.

External users permissions

In cases where it is desired that a user has access only to some internal or private projects, there is the option of creating External Users. This feature may be useful when for example a contractor is working on a given project and should only have access to that project.

External users can only access projects to which they are explicitly granted access, thus hiding all other internal or private ones from them. Access can be granted by adding the user as member to the project or group.

They will, like usual users, receive a role in the project or group with all the abilities that are mentioned in the table above. They cannot however create groups or projects, and they have the same access as logged out users in all other cases.

An administrator can flag a user as external through the API or by checking the checkbox on the admin panel. As an administrator, navigate to Admin > Users to create a new user or edit an existing one. There, you will find the option to flag the user as external.

By default new users are not set as external users. This behavior can be changed by an administrator under Admin > Application Settings.

Default internal users

The "Internal users" field allows specifying an e-mail address regex pattern to identify default internal users.

New users whose email address matches the regex pattern will be set to internal by default rather than an external collaborator.

The regex pattern format is Ruby, but it needs to be convertible to JavaScript, and the ignore case flag will be set, e.g. "/regex pattern/i".

Here are some examples:

  • Use \.internal@domain\.com$ to mark email addresses ending with ".internal@domain.com" internal.
  • Use ^(?:(?!\.ext@domain\.com).)*$\r? to mark users with email addresses NOT including .ext@domain.com internal.

Please be aware that this regex could lead to a DOS attack, see ReDos on Wikipedia.

Auditor users (PREMIUM ONLY)

Introduced in GitLab Premium 8.17.

Auditor users are given read-only access to all projects, groups, and other resources on the GitLab instance.

An Auditor user should be able to access all projects and groups of a GitLab instance with the permissions described on the documentation on auditor users permissions.

Read more about Auditor users.

Project features

Project features like wiki and issues can be hidden from users depending on which visibility level you select on project settings.

  • Disabled: disabled for everyone
  • Only team members: only team members will see even if your project is public or internal
  • Everyone with access: everyone can see depending on your project visibility level
  • Everyone: enabled for everyone (only available for GitLab Pages)

GitLab CI/CD permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

GitLab CI/CD permissions rely on the role the user has in GitLab. There are four permission levels in total:

  • admin
  • maintainer
  • developer
  • guest/reporter

The admin user can perform any action on GitLab CI/CD in scope of the GitLab instance and project. In addition, all admins can use the admin interface under /admin/runners.

Action Guest, Reporter Developer Maintainer Admin
See commits and jobs
Retry or cancel job
Erase job artifacts and trace ✓ (1)
Remove project
Create project
Change project configuration
Add specific runners
Add shared runners
See events in the system
Admin interface
  • 1: Only if the job was triggered by the user

Job permissions

NOTE: Note: In GitLab 11.0, the Master role was renamed to Maintainer.

Note: GitLab 8.12 has a completely redesigned job permissions system. Read all about the new model and its implications.

This table shows granted privileges for jobs triggered by specific types of users:

Action Guest, Reporter Developer Maintainer Admin
Run CI job
Clone source and LFS from current project
Clone source and LFS from public projects
Clone source and LFS from internal projects ✓ (1) ✓ (1)
Clone source and LFS from private projects ✓ (2) ✓ (2) ✓ (2)
Pull container images from current project
Pull container images from public projects
Pull container images from internal projects ✓ (1) ✓ (1)
Pull container images from private projects ✓ (2) ✓ (2) ✓ (2)
Push container images to current project
Push container images to other projects
Push source and LFS
  • 1: Only if the user is not an external one
  • 2: Only if the user is a member of the project

New CI job permissions model

GitLab 8.12 has a completely redesigned job permissions system. To learn more, read through the documentation on the new CI/CD permissions model.

Running pipelines on protected branches

The permission to merge or push to protected branches is used to define if a user can run CI/CD pipelines and execute actions on jobs that are related to those branches.

See Security on protected branches for details about the pipelines security model.

LDAP users permissions

Since GitLab 8.15, LDAP user permissions can now be manually overridden by an admin user. Read through the documentation on LDAP users permissions to learn more.

Project aliases

Project aliases can only be read, created and deleted by a GitLab administrator. Read through the documentation on Project aliases to learn more.