GitHub is owned by Microsoft. Open-source alternatives exist for self-hosting your code (sovereignty, privacy) and to avoid MS lock-in.
Gitea is the lightweight self-host GitHub clone. Issues, PRs, wiki, releases, packages, actions.
github.com/go-gitea/giteaGitea is the lightweight self-host GitHub clone. Issues, PRs, wiki, releases, packages, actions. Single Go binary, runs anywhere, sips RAM. The dominant pick for personal/team self-hosted git.
You want a self-hosted GitHub for your team without the resource overhead of GitLab.
You need CI/CD at GitLab's scale or built-in DevSecOps features.
Forgejo is the community fork of Gitea (forked over governance concerns). 99% feature-compatible. Pick Forgejo if you care about the more open governance model; pick Gitea if you want the larger ecosystem.
You care about transparent, community-led governance for your self-hosted git.
You want the larger ecosystem — Gitea has more plugins/themes.
GitLab Community Edition is the heaviest pick — full DevOps platform with CI/CD, container registry, security scanning, monitoring. Run it if you need the whole stack; otherwise it's overkill.
You need GitLab's full DevOps suite (CI/CD, registries, monitoring) and have ops capacity to run it.
You just need git hosting — Gitea is 100× lighter.
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