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Gitea

In-depth entry

by Gitea Ltd. / Gitea community · Application · also known as Gitea forge

Lightweight self-hosted Git forge written in Go with repositories, pull requests, issues, packages and GitHub-compatible Actions, deployable as a single binary

MIT licenseOpen sourceFreePaidEnterpriseSelf-hostedCloudSelf-hostable
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Link verified Nov 2, 2026

Overview

Gitea is an open-source software forge written in Go, forked from Gogs in 2016 and maintained by a community with commercial backing from Gitea Ltd. It ships as a single binary or container image and provides Git hosting over SSH and HTTPS, pull requests with review, issues and milestones, wikis, a package registry for formats such as npm, PyPI, Docker and Go modules, and Gitea Actions, a CI system that reuses the GitHub Actions workflow syntax and much of its ecosystem through act_runner.

Its footprint is the defining trait: Gitea runs comfortably on a small VM, a Raspberry Pi or a spare Mac mini with SQLite, and scales to PostgreSQL or MySQL for larger installations. Authentication supports local accounts, LDAP, OAuth2 and OpenID Connect, and repository mirroring can pull from or push to GitHub and GitLab. Gitea Ltd. also offers a hosted Gitea Cloud and an Enterprise edition with support, while the core remains MIT-licensed.

In a private cluster, Gitea is a natural home for internal repositories, mirrors of external projects and a package cache, with Actions runners placed on the nodes that have the right toolchains. The 2022 creation of Gitea Ltd. and its control of the trademark and domain prompted part of the community to fork the project as Forgejo; both continue to be developed and remain broadly compatible, though they have diverged in features and governance.

Limitations: the hosted Gitea Cloud and Enterprise tiers are commercial, the Actions implementation is not a complete clone of GitHub's (some marketplace actions and services behave differently), and Gitea provides neither the managed security scanning nor the social discovery of GitHub.

Capabilities

  • Git hosting over SSH and HTTPS with branch protection
  • Pull requests, code review and issue tracking
  • Gitea Actions CI compatible with GitHub workflow syntax
  • Package registry for npm, PyPI, Docker, Go and more
  • Repository mirroring to and from other forges
  • LDAP, OAuth2 and OpenID Connect authentication
  • Single-binary or container deployment with SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL
  • REST API and webhooks

Typical workflows

  1. Host private repositories for a small team on one server
  2. Mirror GitHub projects for offline or air-gapped use
  3. Run CI jobs on self-hosted act_runner nodes
  4. Serve a private npm or PyPI registry

Strengths

  • Very low resource requirements
  • MIT license with commercial support available
  • Familiar GitHub-style interface and Actions syntax
  • Easy to install and upgrade

Limitations

  • Actions compatibility with GitHub is partial
  • No managed security scanning
  • Hosted and enterprise editions are commercial
  • Governance change led to the Forgejo fork

Prerequisites

  • A Linux, macOS or Windows host; optional PostgreSQL or MySQL

Who it is for

  • Small teams and individuals self-hosting Git
  • Organizations needing an air-gapped forge
  • Home-lab and private-cluster operators

Alternatives & comparison

Forgejo is a community fork of Gitea under GPL-3.0-or-later governance by Codeberg; it tracks many of the same features and is the choice for users who prefer a non-profit steward. GitLab's self-managed edition offers a much broader DevOps platform at a far higher resource cost. GitHub provides the community and managed services that a self-hosted forge cannot, and is commonly used alongside Gitea through mirroring.

  • Forgejo

    Community-governed self-hosted Git forge forked from Gitea, stewarded by Codeberg e.V., with pull requests, issues, packages and Forgejo Actions

    Open sourceOpen source
  • Git

    Distributed version control system that records snapshots of a project's history locally and synchronizes them with remotes such as GitHub, GitLab or a bare repository over SSH

    Open sourceOpen source
  • GitHub

    Microsoft-owned code hosting platform for Git repositories with pull requests, issues, Actions CI/CD, package registry, Copilot and the largest open-source community

    ProprietaryFreemium
  • GitHub Actions

    GitHub's CI/CD and automation service that runs YAML-defined workflows on hosted or self-hosted runners in response to repository events

    ProprietaryFreemium
  • GitLab

    Open-core DevSecOps platform combining Git hosting, merge requests, integrated CI/CD pipelines, registry and security scanning, available as SaaS or self-managed

    MixedFreemium
Compare Gitea with its alternatives →

Sources & verification

Primary sources consulted for this record. Claims are tied to the fields each source supports; the automated link checker re-verifies every URL on a schedule.

Confidence
High
Reviewed
Nov 1, 2026
Links
Verified · Nov 2, 2026

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Git

Git project (Software Freedom Conservancy) · Version control & code hosting

In-depth entry

Distributed version control system that records snapshots of a project's history locally and synchronizes them with remotes such as GitHub, GitLab or a bare repository over SSH

GPL-2.0-onlyOpen sourceFreeLocalSelf-hostedNov 2, 2026