DevSecOps platform provider GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB) announced better-than-expected revenue in Q2 CY2026, with sales up 21.3% year on year to $286.3 million. The company expects next quarter’s revenue to be around $282 million, close to analysts’ estimates. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.24 per share was 33.6% above analysts’ consensus estimates.
Is now the time to buy GitLab? Find out by accessing our full research report, it’s free.
GitLab (GTLB) Q2 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $286.3 million vs analyst estimates of $273.1 million (21.3% year-on-year growth, 4.8% beat)
- Adjusted EPS: $0.24 vs analyst estimates of $0.18 (33.6% beat)
- Adjusted Operating Income: $42.57 million vs analyst estimates of $31.25 million (14.9% margin, 36.2% beat)
- The company lifted its revenue guidance for the full year to $1.13 billion at the midpoint from $1.12 billion, a 1.4% increase
- Management raised its full-year Adjusted EPS guidance to $0.86 at the midpoint, a 6.8% increase
- Operating Margin: -19.9%, down from -7.8% in the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow was -$3.31 million, down from $146.7 million in the previous quarter
- Net Revenue Retention Rate: 117%, in line with the previous quarter
- Billings: $305 million at quarter end, up 24.7% year on year
- Market Capitalization: $7.86 billion
“Q2 was an exceptional quarter, with record gross bookings and net ARR growth exceeding 40% year over year,” said Bill Staples, GitLab Chief Executive Officer. “As AI drives more software creation and more work through the development lifecycle, the context, security, governance and control GitLab provides become increasingly valuable. We believe this creates a significant opportunity for GitLab as humans and agents increasingly build software together.”
Company Overview
With its all-remote workforce pioneering a new approach to software development, GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB) provides a single-application DevSecOps platform that helps development, operations, and security teams collaborate to build, secure, and deploy software faster.
Revenue Growth
Reviewing a company’s long-term sales performance reveals insights into its quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years. Over the last five years, GitLab grew its sales at an exceptional 40% compounded annual growth rate. Its growth surpassed the average software company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a great starting point for our analysis.
Long-term growth is the most important, but within software, a half-decade historical view may miss new innovations or demand cycles. GitLab’s annualized revenue growth of 25.9% over the last two years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results suggest healthy demand. 
This quarter, GitLab reported robust year-on-year revenue growth of 21.3%, and its $286.3 million of revenue topped Wall Street estimates by 4.8%. Company management is currently guiding for a 15.4% year-on-year increase in sales next quarter.
Looking further ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 13.3% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. This projection is underwhelming and implies its products and services will face some demand challenges. At least the company is tracking well in other measures of financial health.
ONE MORE THING: 3 Hidden Platforms Growing 3X Faster than Amazon, Google, and PayPal. Amazon, Google, and Meta all followed the same playbook: Dominate an ignored market. Build an unbeatable moat. Scale until you’re unstoppable.
These three platforms are running that exact playbook right now. The early investors in Amazon made fortunes. The early investors in these could do the same. Get All 3 Stocks Here for FREE.
Billings
Billings is a non-GAAP metric that is often called “cash revenue” because it shows how much money the company has collected from customers in a certain period. This is different from revenue, which must be recognized in pieces over the length of a contract.
GitLab’s billings punched in at $305 million in Q2, and over the last four quarters, its growth was solid as it averaged 18.4% year-on-year increases. This alternate topline metric grew slower than total sales, meaning the company recognizes revenue faster than it collects cash - a headwind for its liquidity that could also signal a slowdown in future revenue growth. 
Customer Retention
One of the best parts about the software-as-a-service business model (and a reason why they trade at high valuation multiples) is that customers typically spend more on a company’s products and services over time.
GitLab’s net revenue retention rate, a key performance metric measuring how much money existing customers from a year ago are spending today, was 117% in Q2. This means GitLab would’ve grown its revenue by 17% even if it didn’t win any new customers over the last 12 months.
Despite falling over the last year, GitLab still has a good net retention rate, proving that customers are satisfied with its software and getting more value from it over time, which is always great to see.
Key Takeaways from GitLab’s Q2 Results
We were impressed by how significantly GitLab blew past analysts’ billings expectations this quarter. We were also glad its EPS guidance for next quarter trumped Wall Street’s estimates. Zooming out, we think this was a good print with some key areas of upside. The stock traded up 15.9% to $52.15 immediately following the results.
GitLab had an encouraging quarter, but one earnings result doesn’t necessarily make the stock a buy. Let’s see if this is a good investment. We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
