Woodpecker

Woodpecker is what Drone CI was before Harness acquired it and gated features behind an enterprise license. A fully open-source CI/CD engine (Apache 2.0) that runs on 100MB RAM, supports GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, and Forgejo, and uses the same YAML pipeline syntax Drone users already know. Every feature is free for everyone — no enterprise tiers.

If you're self-hosting Git on Gitea or Forgejo and want CI/CD that isn't GitHub Actions, Woodpecker is the natural choice. GitHub Actions is the zero-config default but brings vendor lock-in and opaque billing. Drone is the predecessor with a now-restrictive license. GitLab CI is excellent but requires GitLab itself.

The catch: Woodpecker's plugin ecosystem is smaller than Drone's at its peak, and much smaller than GitHub Actions' marketplace. The community is passionate but small — when you hit an edge case, you might be reading source code, not Stack Overflow. And if you're already on GitHub, the convenience of Actions is hard to beat for most indie projects.