Git Tools

4 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars — scroll down for our analysis.

Tool	Stars	Velocity	Language	License	Score
lazygit Simple terminal UI for git commands	75.0k	—	Go	MIT License	82
Gitea Self-hosted Git service	54.5k	—	Go	MIT License	82
delta Syntax-highlighting pager for git/diff output	29.7k	+126/wk	Rust	MIT License	77
git-machete	1.1k	—	Python	—	46

Our Analysis

lazygit75.0k★

lazygit makes git actually usable from the terminal. A TUI that turns staging, committing, branching, rebasing, and cherry-picking into keyboard-driven operations that take seconds instead of hunting through git man pages. At 75k stars, it's the most popular terminal git client for a reason. tig is the OG terminal git viewer — great for reading history, less great for interactive operations. GitKraken is the polished GUI with Jira integration, but it's commercial and heavy. VS Code's built-in git is adequate for basics but clumsy for complex operations like interactive rebasing. Use lazygit if you live in the terminal and want to move through git workflows at the speed of thought. Interactive rebasing, conflict resolution, and partial staging are where it truly shines. The catch: it's a terminal tool — if you want drag-and-drop branch management or visual merge conflict editors, GitKraken's GUI is still superior. The keybindings have a learning curve (though a short one). And it doesn't integrate with issue trackers the way GitKraken does with Jira and GitHub Issues.

Gitea54.5k★

Gitea is self-hosted GitHub that runs on a Raspberry Pi. At 200-300MB RAM idle, it provides issues, pull requests, CI/CD (via Gitea Actions), and a clean web UI — everything a small team needs without GitLab's 12GB+ RAM appetite. 54k stars and written in Go for a reason: it's fast and resource-efficient. GitLab is the enterprise monolith with built-in CI/CD, security scanning, and DevSecOps — if you have the RAM and the team to manage it. Forgejo is a community fork of Gitea with GPLv3 and stronger governance guarantees (Gitea went Open Core). GitHub is the obvious cloud choice. Use Gitea if you want self-hosted git with a modern UI and you don't need GitLab's enterprise features. Perfect for homelabs, small teams, and organizations with data sovereignty requirements. The catch: Gitea Actions are GitHub Actions-compatible but less mature. The project went Open Core — some features are now proprietary. If the open-source governance matters to you, Forgejo (the community fork) is the principled alternative with the same lightweight footprint. CI/CD runners need separate setup, unlike GitLab's integrated approach.

delta29.7k★

Delta transforms your terminal git diffs from unreadable monochrome walls into syntax-highlighted, word-level diffing with proper formatting. Set it as your git pager once and every `git diff`, `git log`, and `git blame` becomes dramatically more readable. It's the kind of small tool that makes you wonder how you lived without it. Install it now. Seriously. It takes 30 seconds to configure and improves every git interaction. diff-so-fancy is the lighter alternative with less features. bat (by the same community) handles syntax highlighting for file viewing. The built-in git diff is the baseline nobody should accept. The catch: It's a terminal pager, not a GUI diff tool. If you want side-by-side visual diffs with merge conflict resolution, you still need VS Code or a dedicated diff tool. Delta adds slight overhead to large diffs. And customizing themes requires editing gitconfig, which is fiddly but worth it. Literally no reason not to install this.