Git Merge vs Rebase: When to Use Each

Merge and rebase both answer the question "how do I bring these two branches together?" — but they answer it in opposite ways, and the resulting project history looks very different. Knowing which to use, and the one rule you must never break, prevents a great deal of pain.

What merge does

Merging takes the changes from one branch and combines them into another, creating a new merge commit that has both branches as parents. It preserves history exactly as it happened — you can see that a feature branch existed, when it diverged, and when it rejoined. The downside is that many merges produce a tangled, bushy history that can be hard to read.

What rebase does

Rebasing takes your commits and replays them, one by one, on top of another branch — as if you had started your work from the latest code. The result is a clean, linear history with no merge commits. It looks tidy and is easy to follow, but there is a catch: rebasing rewrites commits, giving them new identities.

A practical workflow

A common, sane approach: rebase your own local feature branch onto the latest main to keep it current and clean while you work, since those commits are private to you. Then, when integrating the finished feature, merge it into main — often with a merge commit — so the integration point is recorded. This gives tidy feature branches and a clear, honest project history.

Resolving conflicts

Both can produce conflicts, but they feel different. A merge resolves all conflicts at once in a single merge commit. A rebase replays commits one at a time, so you may resolve conflicts repeatedly as each commit lands. For a long-diverged branch, a merge can be less tedious; for a short one, rebase is quick and clean.