Forrester Consulting: GitLab Duo Agent Platform delivers 400% ROI (opens in new tab)

GitLab-commissioned Forrester research found that organizations using GitLab Duo Agent Platform could achieve a 400% three-year ROI, $7.5 million in net present value, and payback in under six months. The study argues that agentic coding creates the greatest business value when integrated across the software lifecycle—not merely used to generate code. Benefits included faster onboarding, shorter migrations, quicker security remediation, and more developer time for feature work.

Study Scope and Financial Model

• Forrester interviewed four organizations across financial services, software, entertainment, and insurance.
• Their experiences were modeled as a composite global company with:
  • $3 billion in annual revenue
  • 3,000 employees
  • GitLab Duo Agent Platform adoption growing from 150 to 250 users
• Three-year risk-adjusted costs totaled approximately $1.9 million:
  • $1.3 million in consumption credits
  • $589,000 for implementation, training, support, and internal labor
• Quantified benefits reached $9.4 million, producing:
  • 400% ROI
  • $7.5 million net present value
  • Payback in less than six months

Problems Before Adoption

• Manual processes and ad-hoc knowledge sharing slowed development.
• New developers depended heavily on senior engineers for context and troubleshooting.
• Security fixes waited in queues for specialists with the necessary expertise.
• Code review was often a larger bottleneck than writing code.
• Senior engineers were repeatedly interrupted to unblock other team members.

Quantified Benefits

• 80% faster developer onboarding

  • Agentic chat in IDEs and repositories helped new hires understand unfamiliar codebases independently.
  • Estimated savings: $582,000.

• 75% shorter migration timeline

  • A migration from on-premises GitLab to GitLab SaaS finished in two months instead of eight.
  • Agents helped diagnose pipeline failures and resolve issues during the migration.
  • Estimated labor savings: $157,000.

• 40% more time for security and QA engineers

  • Contextual explanations and suggested fixes reduced remediation effort and reliance on senior staff.
  • Estimated three-year savings: $1.3 million.

• 20% more developer capacity for feature work

  • Agents supported code review, testing, and troubleshooting.
  • Estimated combined benefit: $7.4 million.

• Additional unquantified benefits included reduced need for overlapping AI tools, improved developer satisfaction, and stronger knowledge sharing.

Broader Impact on Software Delivery

The study found that organizations shipped features in days rather than weeks, resolved vulnerabilities more quickly, onboarded staff faster, and compressed major infrastructure work. Its central conclusion is that AI productivity gains compound when agentic coding is connected to infrastructure supporting the entire software delivery lifecycle.

The findings are based on interviewed organizations and a composite financial model, so actual results will vary. Companies evaluating agentic development should use the study as a framework for estimating benefits across productivity, security, onboarding, and operational efficiency—not as a guaranteed ROI.