Can you approve your own GitLab merge request? Approval rules explained

Whether you can approve your own merge request depends on two things: your GitLab plan and one project setting. Here is how approving works in GitLab in 2026, who counts as an approver, and how approval rules decide whether an approval is needed at all.

How to approve, and how to take it back

• In the browser: open the merge request and select Approve in the merge request widget, or comment /approve. A green check appears beside your name in the reviewer list.
• As part of a review: when you submit a review from Your review, choose Approve as the outcome. The other outcomes are Comment and Request changes.
• To undo it: select Revoke approval in the same widget.
• From the command line: glab mr approve 235, or just glab mr approve on the merge request’s branch. Add --sha with the commit you reviewed, so the approval fails if someone has pushed since. glab mr revoke 235 takes it back.
• Through the API: POST /projects/:id/merge_requests/:merge_request_iid/approve, with an optional sha that returns 409 Conflict if it no longer matches, and .../unapprove to take it back. Approving through the API works on every tier, Free included.

Free vs Premium: when an approval is required

Feature	Free	Premium and Ultimate
Approve and revoke	Yes	Yes
Approvals block merging	No, they are optional	Yes, when an approval rule requires them
Approval rules: how many, from whom, on which branches	No	Yes, up to 100 required approvals per rule
Code Owner approval	No	Yes
Request changes blocks the merge	No	Yes
Settings for author and committer approval, new commits, re-authentication	No	Yes

Who counts as an approver

On Free, anyone with at least the Developer role can approve. On Premium and Ultimate, each approval rule names its approvers, and to count for it a user must be a direct member of the project, its group, a parent group, a shared group, or a group added as approvers.

• Inherited members don’t count. Someone who only inherits access to an approver group is not an approver for that group.
• Roles: the Developer role or higher. Reporters and Planners count only through a shared group, and only once approval permissions are turned on for them.
• Code owners of the changed files count when the rule includes them.

Can the author or a committer approve?

On Premium and Ultimate, the author can’t by default, because Prevent approval by merge request creator is on. Two related settings sit beside it:

• Prevent approvals by users who add commits stops anyone who committed to the merge request, as Git author or committer, from approving it.
• Require user re-authentication (password or SAML) to approve asks approvers to sign in again first. It is set on top-level groups.

The first two live in the project’s Settings › Merge requests, under Merge request approvals › Approval settings, and a group or the instance can lock them. One more setting matters here: unless Prevent editing approval rules in merge requests is on, and it is off by default, the author can edit a merge request’s approval rules and override the project’s.

On Free, an approval never gates the merge, so the question only matters on the paid tiers.

What a new push does to approvals

The same settings decide what happens when commits are added to the source branch:

• Remove all approvals when commits are added to the source branch is the default: every approval resets, and reviewers approve again.
• Keep approvals: existing approvals stay.
• Remove approvals by Code Owners if their files changed: only a Code Owner whose files changed loses their approval.

So if every approval disappears after each push, that is the default at work. Choose Keep approvals to stop it.

Setting up an approval rule

1. Go to Settings › Merge requests, find Approval rules, and select Add approval rule.
2. Set Approvals required: 0 makes the rule optional, anything above 0 makes it required.
3. Add the users or groups who can approve, and choose the target branch: all protected branches or a single branch.

To bring in Code Owners, enter a number in the Approvals required field of the All eligible users rule, and require code owner approval on the protected branch.

Request changes, and AI reviewers

A reviewer can submit Request changes instead of approving. On Premium and Ultimate, that blocks the merge until the same reviewer re-reviews and approves, or until someone who can merge selects Bypass. AI reviewers don’t change the count: GitLab Duo’s approvals, a beta in GitLab 19.5, don’t count toward required approvals, though with that beta on a change request from Duo blocks the merge like a person’s. More in can Claude or ChatGPT review a GitLab merge request? If every approval is in and the merge still won’t go, see why can’t I merge my GitLab merge request?

Approving from your phone

Most approvals come down to one tap once you have read the diff. MergeBell sends a push when someone requests your review, opens the merge request on a phone-sized diff, and lists what still blocks the merge, approvals included, next to its Approve and Merge buttons. Both are in the free tier. See how to review a GitLab merge request on your phone.