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Gitea Review

Depends

Should I use Gitea?

Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service: Git hosting, code review, collaboration, package registry, CI/CD - gitea.io

· 1 month ago

Buy if your team wants a free, self-hosted GitHub-style forge and can run and patch a server yourself. Skip it if you want zero-maintenance managed hosting, vendor SLAs, or are uneasy about the 2022 governance split that spawned the Forgejo fork.

Confidence

Medium. Based on ~8 public sources; mostly Gitea's own pages plus Wikipedia. No independent reviews or ratings found.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support qualityNo support evidence in sources
  • Security posture

Pricing

Free

Self-hosted

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes
Gitea Cloud30-day free trial; paid price not published

Best for

  • Self-hosting dev teams
  • Cost-conscious startups
  • Orgs needing code/data control
  • GitHub Actions users wanting on-prem CI

Not for

  • Teams wanting zero-maintenance managed hosting
  • Enterprises needing vendor SLAs and dedicated support
  • Buyers wary of fork or governance risk
  • Non-technical teams — this is developer tooling

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

2022 governance split: company formed, Codeberg forked to Forgejo; fork risk persists

medium

No cloud pricing published in sources; expect sales contact after the 30-day trial

medium

SSO and audit logs gated behind paid tier — compliance teams should check first

medium

Self-hosting puts CVE patching on your ops team, not the vendor

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free and open source under MIT license
  • All-in-one: Git hosting, issues, code review, kanban, wiki, CI/CD
  • 20+ package registry formats, Cargo to RubyGems
  • Runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
  • Gitea Actions is GitHub Actions-compatible

Cons

  • Gitea Limited sells closed-source cloud; community forked to Forgejo
  • Self-hosting means you own upgrades, backups, and patching
  • Enterprise features (SAML SSO, audit logs) reserved for paid cloud
  • Priority security fixes limited to paying cloud customers

Sources & method

- 7 sources - No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed; vendor states all CVEs are fixed in the latest stable release.

official x5security x1news x1

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • Free

    Starting price

  • 7

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Free MIT core; paid cloud optional
  • Ease of use: 4/5. Vendor claims clean, intuitive interface
  • Feature depth: 5/5. Git, review, CI, wiki, kanban, 20+ registries
  • Support quality. No support evidence in sources
  • Security posture: 3/5. CVEs occur; fixed in latest stable
  • Dec 2016 First release 1.0; fork of Gogs
  • Yes Free tier MIT-licensed self-host + 30-day cloud trial
  • 20+ Package registries Maven, NPM, PyPI, Container, Helm, more
  • GitHub Actions-compatible CI Built-in Gitea Actions

Pricing

Self-hosted

Free

  • MIT license, full core features
  • You run and patch the server

Gitea Cloud

30-day free trial; paid price not published

  • SAML SSO, audit logs, Kubernetes autoscaling runners
  • Priority security fixes
  • Discounts for nonprofits and small companies

Security

No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed; vendor states all CVEs are fixed in the latest stable release.

What users say

No independent user reviews found; all quotes in sources are vendor marketing copy.

Alternatives

Compare Gitea with each alternative.

  • Forgejo

    Community-governed Gitea fork; similar features, less vendor-control risk

    Gitea vs Forgejo

  • Gogs

    The original lightweight forge; simpler, fewer features

  • GitLab CE

    Heavier self-hosted DevOps platform; more built-in

Companies that use it

  • Codeberg²
Full analysis

Based on ~8 public sources; mostly Gitea's own pages plus Wikipedia. No independent reviews or ratings found.

Solid free self-hosted GitHub alternative; you run the server, and the paid cloud split triggered a community fork (Forgejo).

Methodology

Based on ~8 public sources; mostly Gitea's own pages plus Wikipedia. No independent reviews or ratings found.

Read how a report is made.

Sources

  1. Gitea Official Websitegitea.io
    official
  2. Gitea - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
    news
  3. About Giteaabout.gitea.com
    official
  4. Gitea Product Pageabout.gitea.com
    official
  5. Gitea Pricingabout.gitea.com
    official
  6. Gitea Securityabout.gitea.com
    security
  7. Gitea Downloadsgitea.io
    official

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