Tools/go-gitea/gitea

Gitea

Self-hosted Git service

58.9k ★+141/wkestablishedGoMIT License →trending

View on GitHub →Compare in Git Hosting →Homepage →

Replaces:Bitbucket GitLab.com

See how it compares →

The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Oct 2026

Gitea is the lightest full Git forge you can run yourself. One Go binary gives you repos, pull requests, code review, wikis, a package registry, and Gitea Actions, CI that reads GitHub Actions YAML. The open source build is MIT licensed with unlimited users.

Setup is a binary or Docker image plus a database: SQLite for a small team, Postgres for anything bigger. The docs say 1GB of RAM is typically enough for small teams, so a $6 a month droplet works. Version 28.0 dropped the old "1." prefix and added audit logging, off by default, to the free build.

Paying gets you SAML SSO, dependency scanning and autoscaling runners. Enterprise is $19 per user per month at list, or $9.50 on a one year commitment. Gitea Cloud, single-tenant managed hosting, lists the same $19, currently shown at $9.50. Solo and small teams: free. Larger teams needing SAML: compare GitHub Enterprise at $21.

The catch is patching. CISA put a Gitea remote code execution bug on its actively exploited list in August, and 28.0 fixed five critical advisories, including a self-hosted runner takeover from a fork pull request. Upgrade within days. Forgejo is the community fork.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

open core

Free: The MIT-licensed open source build: unlimited users and repositories, code hosting, issues, pull requests, project boards, Gitea Actions (GitHub Actions compatible), a package and container registry, and LDAP, PAM, SMTP, FreeIPA, reverse proxy and OAuth2/OpenID Connect login. Since 28.0 it also records audit events (off by default). No SAML. gitea.com itself offers free hosting for open source projects.

Self-hosted: One binary or Docker image plus SQLite, Postgres, MySQL or MSSQL. Gitea's docs say 2 CPU cores and 1GB of RAM is typically sufficient for small teams; a 1 GiB DigitalOcean droplet is $6 a month. Backups, upgrades and Actions runners are yours, and 2026 has brought a heavy run of security advisories, so plan to upgrade promptly.

Paid: Gitea Enterprise (self-managed) is listed at $19 per user per month, shown as $9.50 per user per month with a 1-year commitment paid online. It adds SAML SSO, its own audit log, Kubernetes autoscaling runners, dependency scanning, IP allowlisting, mandatory 2FA, org-level branch protection inheritance, enterprise themes and SLA-backed support. Gitea Cloud (single-tenant managed hosting, your choice of provider and region) lists $19 per user per month, currently shown at $9.50 (the page also notes discounts for non-profits and small companies); yearly billing is $15.83 list or $7.92 discounted per user per month ($95 per user billed annually). Extra object storage is $10 per 100GB. Both have a 30-day free trial. For comparison, GitHub Team is $4 per user per month and GitHub Enterprise $21.

The MIT build is free with unlimited users and now includes basic audit logging. SAML SSO means Enterprise at $19 per user per month ($9.50 on a one year commitment), and Gitea Cloud lists the same $19, currently shown at $9.50.

What to do by team size

Solo: free; one binary on a $6 a month droplet
Small team: free; LDAP and OAuth2 cover most logins
Medium team: free, but budget time for Postgres, backups, runners and fast security upgrades
Large team: Enterprise at $19 per user per month ($9.50 on a one year commitment) when SAML SSO is required

Self-hosting ops:moderate

View pricing page →

Get tools like this every Wednesday

One featured tool, three on the radar. No fluff.