# Gerrit

60 Hacker News commenters recommended Gerrit and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Gerrit for commit-by-commit code review, stacked changes, and comments kept tied to code between commits. The most common caveat is a steep learning curve.

## Why people recommend it

- Stacked, commit-by-commit review (7 comments): "I personally find the rebase and stacking commit focused method of integration that Gerrit uses to be easier and cleaner" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100305)) "I thought it was great being able to shape my diffs into stacked chunks that reviewers could effortlessly navigate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48166625)) "I've found stacked diffs (with Phabricator and Gerrit at least...) to massively simplify my workflow" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124798))
- Better review UI than GitHub (5 comments): "I personally think Gerrit works much better than whatever GitHub et al. have for code reviews." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973950)) "I continue to use gerrit explicitly because I cannot stand github reviews" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47757740)) "Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49343074))
- Diff-based review, not branch-based (3 comments): "which IMO is a much better experience than the branch-review-squash model that GitHub normalized" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49797917)) "I really like Gerrit's workflow with diff reviews as opposed to pull requests" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972666)) "I liked to work with gerrit, where the unit of the review is the commit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487867))
- Comments stay tied across commits (2 comments): "The number one thing that gerrit does that is important is keep comments tied to the code between commits." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974656)) "they don't support proper tracking of review commits like e.g. Gerritt does" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134635))

## What people warn about

- Steep learning curve, hard onboarding (4 comments): "Gerrit looks ugly and is not very easy to use at first, but at least it's not slow like GitLab and GitHub." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47099319)) "dedicate a few additional hours of his life to create an account and figure out how to use some obscure" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46133265)) "phabricator/reviewable/gerritt all have significant onboarding hurdles" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764712))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [GitHub Stacked PRs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-stacked-prs.md): 64 recommend
- [Graphite code review](https://hackerapproved.com/p/graphite.md): 52 recommend
- [CodeRabbit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/coderabbit.md): 34 recommend
- [Stage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/stage.md): 32 recommend
- [Whiteboard IDE](https://hackerapproved.com/p/whiteboard.md): 29 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Gerrit", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gerrit/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).