Alternatives to Gitea
Lightweight self-hosted git service
Gitea ranks #6 of 7 in Git hosting, with an Alt Score of 78. It is licensed under MIT, open source with paid hosting from Free and available on Linux, macOS, Windows and Web. 9 of 12 checklist rows are verified against a public source.
Developers, teams, and organizations who want their own Git hosting and DevOps platform rather than relying on a third-party SaaS; scales from solo self-hosters to enterprises needing SSO and audit logs.
A Git repository host with code review/pull requests, issue tracking, and kanban-style project boards. Includes Gitea Actions, a built-in CI/CD runner compatible with GitHub Actions workflow syntax, plus a package registry supporting 20+ formats (NPM, PyPI, Maven, Cargo, etc.) and webhooks/API access. Available as free self-hosted open-source software, as managed Gitea Cloud, or as Gitea Enterprise (self-hosted with SSO, audit logs, SLA support).
Gitea is a single lightweight Go binary that you deploy on Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, or Kubernetes (x86 or arm64), backed by SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, TiDB, or MS SQL. Its low resource footprint lets it run on modest hardware, from a Raspberry Pi to production servers, or you can skip self-hosting entirely and use the managed Gitea Cloud offering.
Why people leave Gitea
Dashed reasons are sourced facts; the rest are opinions. Vendors can dispute.
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Ranked alternatives
Ordered by Alt Score. Click any score to see the breakdown.
Feature comparison
How Gitea compares with its alternatives, feature by feature.
| Git hosting checklist | Gitea | Codeberg | Forgejo | GitLab | GitHub | Bitbucket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | ||||||
| Starts at | ||||||
| License | ||||||
| Platforms | ||||||
| Private repos (free) | ||||||
| CI/CD built in | ||||||
| Pull-request reviews | ||||||
| Issues & projects | ||||||
| Self-hostable | ||||||
| Package registry | ||||||
| Pages / static hosting | ||||||
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| Open source | ||||||
| LFS support | ||||||
| Fine-grained permissions |
Every fact and feature listed for Gitea is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
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Pricing model OSS + paid hosting verified 2026-07-09
Open Source (Free) ... Code hosting, Issue tracking, Pull requests, Project management, Gitea Actions (CI/CD), Packages ... Enterprise ... $9.5$19*/user/month
https://about.gitea.com/pricing -
Status active verified 2026-07-09
The project is written in Go and remains actively maintained with 56.7k stars and over 21,000 commits
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea -
License MIT verified 2026-07-09
Software"), to deal in the "
Copyright (c) 2016 The Gitea Authors Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/LICENSE -
Starts at Free verified 2026-07-09
Open Source (Free) ... Full control, unlimited users and repositories
https://about.gitea.com/pricing -
Platforms Linux, macOS, Windows, Web verified 2026-07-09
For Linux, you will likely want linux-amd64 ... For Windows, you will likely want windows-4.0-amd64 ... darwin-arm64 and darwin-amd64 binaries respectively
https://docs.gitea.com/installation/install-from-binary -
Private repos (free) Yes verified 2026-07-09
Self-hosted OSS free with no repo restrictions.
Open Source (Free) ... Full control, unlimited users and repositories
https://about.gitea.com/pricing -
CI/CD built in Yes verified 2026-07-09
Starting with Gitea 1.19, Gitea Actions are available as a built-in CI/CD solution.
https://docs.gitea.com/usage/actions/overview -
Pull-request reviews Yes verified 2026-07-09
When a PR is created, it triggers a review process. The maintainers … can leave comments, request changes, or approve the changes.
https://docs.gitea.com/usage/pull-request -
Self-hostable Yes verified 2026-07-09
The goal of Gitea is to make the easiest, fastest, and most painless way of setting up a self-hosted all-in-one software development service
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea -
Package registry Yes verified 2026-07-09
The Package Registry can be used as a public or private registry for common package managers.
https://docs.gitea.com/usage/packages/overview -
API access Yes verified 2026-07-09
API Reference guide is auto-generated by swagger and available on: https://gitea.your.host/api/swagger
https://docs.gitea.com/development/api-usage -
Open source Yes verified 2026-07-09
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software
https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/LICENSE -
LFS support Yes verified 2026-07-09
To use Gitea's built-in LFS support, you must update the app.ini file
https://docs.gitea.com/administration/git-lfs-setup -
Fine-grained permissions Yes verified 2026-07-09
With different permissions, people could do different things with these units. Read Write and Admin permissions across Code, Issues, PullRequests, Releases, Wiki, Projects, Packages, and Actions units
https://docs.gitea.com/usage/permissions
FAQ
Yes. Forgejo, GitLab and GitHub have a free tier or are fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.
Codeberg, Forgejo and GitLab — every license claim links its source.