What is the difference between rebase and merge?

merge integrates changes from one branch into another by creating a new merge commit that records the fact of the merge. The history remains linear, showing when and where changes were taken from.

rebase moves the changes of one branch onto the top of another, creating a new sequence of commits. The history appears cleaner and more linear, as if changes always occurred on top of the target branch, but the original commits are rewritten.

	merge	rebase
History	Remains non-linear, merge commit visible	Becomes linear, commits are rewritten
Cleanliness	Has a merge commit	History is clean, no merge commits
Commit changes	Does not modify existing commits	Rewrites commits
Usage	For integrating branches, public branches	For cleaning up local branch history before merging