Gitea: Self-Hosted Git Service

Gitea is a lightweight, self-hosted Git forge that provides repository hosting, code review, issue tracking, CI/CD, and package registries in a single application. With over 53,000 GitHub stars, it is one of the most popular open-source alternatives to GitHub and GitLab for teams that want to own their code hosting infrastructure. Gitea is written in Go and ships as a single binary with minimal dependencies.

Self-hosting Gitea means your source code, pull requests, and CI/CD pipelines never leave your own infrastructure — ideal for proprietary projects, compliance-sensitive teams, and developers who value code sovereignty.

Key Features

• Git repository hosting with web-based browsing, blame, and diff views
• Pull requests with inline code review, approvals, and merge strategies
• Issue tracking with labels, milestones, project boards, and templates
• Built-in CI/CD with Gitea Actions (GitHub Actions compatible workflow syntax)
• Container and package registries for Docker, npm, Maven, PyPI, and more
• Organizations and teams with fine-grained repository permissions
• Wiki and documentation hosting per repository
• Written in Go as a single binary — fast startup and minimal resource usage

Why Self-Host Gitea?

Code sovereignty. Your source code is your most valuable intellectual property. Self-hosting Gitea ensures it never resides on a third-party platform. No terms of service changes, no account suspensions, and no data mining of your private repositories.

Lightweight and fast. Gitea starts in seconds and runs comfortably on a 1 GB RAM VPS. Unlike GitLab (which requires 4+ GB RAM), Gitea delivers a full-featured Git forge at a fraction of the resource cost, making it ideal for small teams and personal use.

GitHub-compatible workflows. Gitea Actions uses the same YAML workflow syntax as GitHub Actions, making migration straightforward. Your existing CI/CD workflows work with minimal changes, and the growing ecosystem of community actions extends functionality.

Predictable, fixed costs. GitHub and GitLab charge per seat, per CI minute, and per GB of storage. A self-hosted Gitea instance costs only your VPS bill — unlimited users, unlimited repositories, unlimited CI minutes.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	1 vCPU	2+ vCPUs
RAM	512 MB	2 GB
Storage	10 GB SSD	50 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Gitea is remarkably efficient for a full Git forge. RAM usage scales with the number of concurrent users and CI jobs. Storage needs depend on repository sizes — plan for growth if you host large binary assets or many active repositories.

Getting Started

The fastest way to deploy Gitea on your VPS is with Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our step-by-step deployment guide walks you through the full setup, including persistent storage, environment configuration, and SSL.

Deploy Gitea with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• GitLab — Full DevOps platform with extensive CI/CD, security scanning, and enterprise features
• Gogs — Minimal self-hosted Git service focused on simplicity and low resource usage
• Forgejo — Community-governed fork of Gitea with a focus on open governance
• OneDev — Git server with built-in CI/CD, issue tracking, and Kanban boards

FAQ

How does Gitea compare to GitLab? Gitea is significantly lighter — it runs on a fraction of GitLab's resource requirements. GitLab offers more enterprise features like built-in security scanning and advanced CI/CD. Gitea is better suited for small to medium teams that need a fast, low-overhead Git forge.

Can I migrate my repositories from GitHub to Gitea? Yes. Gitea has a built-in migration feature that imports repositories, issues, pull requests, labels, milestones, and releases from GitHub, GitLab, Gogs, and other platforms. The migration preserves history and metadata.

Does Gitea support CI/CD? Yes. Gitea Actions is built into Gitea and uses GitHub Actions-compatible YAML syntax. You can run workflows on push, pull request, schedule, and other events. You need to set up a Gitea Runner (similar to GitHub's self-hosted runners) to execute the jobs.

Is Gitea suitable for enterprise use? Gitea is used by many organizations in production. It supports LDAP/OAuth authentication, audit logging, two-factor authentication, and fine-grained permissions. For very large installations, you can use PostgreSQL or MySQL as the database backend instead of SQLite.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.