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Gitea

A lightweight, self-hosted Git forge in one Go program: repositories, pull requests, issues, a package registry and GitHub Actions-style CI, under the MIT license.

What it is
Version control
Used for
CI/CD pipelines,Issue tracking
Type
Open source
Made by
Gitea Ltd. (CommitGo, Inc.)
License
MIT
Facts checked
20 October 2026
Website Source code

What it is

Gitea’s stated goal is the easiest, fastest and most painless way to run your own Git service. It is a single program written in Go, so it runs wherever Go does: Linux, macOS and Windows, on x86, ARM or PowerPC. Repositories are ordinary Git repositories on disk; users, issues, pull requests and permissions go in a database, either the built-in SQLite or PostgreSQL 12+, MySQL 8.0+, MariaDB 10.4+ or Microsoft SQL Server. On top it offers code review, issues, milestones and projects, and a registry for more than 20 kinds of package, from npm, PyPI and Maven to container images and Helm charts.

Two features stand out. Its built-in CI, Gitea Actions, is designed to be compatible with GitHub Actions: workflows are YAML files in .gitea/workflows or .github/workflows, and jobs run on Gitea Runner processes you register with the server. Steps such as uses: actions/checkout@v4 are downloaded from github.com unless you point Gitea at your own instance. And besides pull requests from forks, Gitea supports the AGit flow: anyone who can read a repository can open a pull request by pushing to a special ref such as refs/for/main, with no fork at all.

Gitea began in 2016 as a community fork of Gogs. Since 2022 the project has been stewarded by the company Gitea Ltd., whose subsidiary CommitGo sells Gitea Cloud (a dedicated, managed instance) and Gitea Enterprise, a paid edition with extra features. Forgejo split off from Gitea in late 2022; its page tells that story. On September 30, 2026 Gitea dropped the historical “1.” from its version numbers, so 1.27 was followed by 28.0.0; the latest release is 28.2.0, from October 18, 2026.

Why teams pick it

  • Light and simple to run: one binary, SQLite for small installs, and it runs on Linux, macOS or Windows across several CPU architectures
  • CI that reads GitHub Actions workflows, so existing workflows and actions such as actions/checkout mostly carry over
  • AGit flow lets contributors open pull requests by pushing to refs/for/<branch>, without creating a fork
  • MIT-licensed, with a package registry, issues, projects and code review included rather than sold separately

Watch out for

  • Gitea Actions is not a full GitHub Actions clone: it ignores environment, has no id-token permission for cloud OIDC logins, and you run the runners yourself
  • Some features large organizations ask for, such as SAML login, are documented as part of the paid Gitea Enterprise rather than the open-source release
  • Gitea’s own comparison marks features it lacks against GitLab, such as nested subgroups and resolving merge conflicts in the browser
  • Major releases bring breaking changes: 28.0 disabled self-registration by default, needs Git 2.25 or newer, and deletes Actions runs after 400 days

Alternatives

What all version control have in common →Compare side by side →
GitHubCommercialThe largest Git host: repositories, pull requests, code review, issues and packages in one web service, owned by Microsoft since 2018 and used by more than 180 million developers.GitLabCommercialA Git forge sold as one application for the whole software lifecycle, from issues and merge requests to built-in CI/CD, packages and security scanning, that you can use on GitLab.com or run yourself.BitbucketCommercialAtlassian’s Git host, built to sit next to Jira: pull requests, code review and Bitbucket Pipelines CI, as the Bitbucket Cloud service or the self-managed Bitbucket Data Center.ForgejoOpen sourceA self-hosted Git forge, like a small GitHub you run yourself: repositories, pull requests, issues, a package registry and built-in CI in one Go program, developed by a community under the non-profit Codeberg e.V. as a hard fork of Gitea.CodebergCommercialA public, non-profit Git forge for free and open-source projects, run on Forgejo by Codeberg e.V., a member-owned association in Berlin: repositories, issues, pull requests, CI, static pages and translations without a company behind them.RadicleOpen sourceA peer-to-peer code forge built on Git: every user runs a node that stores and shares repositories, and issues, patches and reviews travel inside the repository as signed Git objects, with no central server.

How it fits with other technologies

Open a pull request without a fork (AGit flow), then review and merge with tea · bash

git switch -c login-timeout
git commit -am "Extend login session timeout to 30 minutes"

# push straight to a review ref: refs/for/<target branch>
git push origin HEAD:refs/for/main -o topic="login-timeout"

# or use tea, Gitea’s official CLI
tea login add
tea pulls create --base main --title "Extend login session timeout"
tea pulls approve 42
tea pulls merge 42 --style squash

See it in a real stack

No architecture uses Gitea yet. Drop it into the playground and wire it up yourself.Open playground →
Where it came from2016–2026

Gogs was a self-hosted Git service written in Go, but its repository was controlled by one person, its creator Unknwon. Users and contributors who wanted more people to have write access couldn’t persuade him, as he saw Gogs as his own project, so in November 2016 they forked it to develop the code freely. They announced Gitea on December 8, 2016, with three owners elected each year by an open group of maintainers, and released Gitea 1.0 on December 23 after merging 238 pull requests. Almost all of the original code has since been changed.

Gitea grew into a full forge. In March 2023 version 1.19 added Gitea Actions as a preview, reusing GitHub’s workflow syntax rather than inventing a new one. To pay for maintenance, the Technical Oversight Committee announced on October 24, 2022 that it had formed Gitea Limited to offer support, hosting and an enterprise version, that Lunny Xiao had transferred his Gitea domains and trademarks to it, and that Gitea would remain open source and a community project. Part of the community disagreed and created Forgejo.

CommitGo, a subsidiary of Gitea Ltd. founded by Gitea’s creators, announced Gitea Cloud in November 2023 and launched Gitea Enterprise in March 2024. Gitea itself stays MIT-licensed and is developed on GitHub. In September 2026 it dropped the leading “1.” from its version numbers with Gitea 28.0.0, a release that also added audit logging, bot accounts and required code owner reviews.

Why it’s built this way

Community maintainers instead of one owner
The fork existed because one maintainer of Gogs held all write access. Gitea set up an open group of maintainers who vote on contributions, with owners elected yearly, so the project would not depend on one person.
One lightweight Go binary
The goal from the start was a painless self-hosted Git service. Go compiles to a single program for many platforms, and SQLite support means a small team needs no separate database server.
Copy GitHub Actions’ workflow format
Rather than design its own CI language, Gitea Actions reads GitHub-style workflows from .gitea/workflows or .github/workflows, so teams can reuse what they know and much of the existing actions ecosystem.
A company to fund the project
In 2022 the maintainers said some companies can’t sponsor or contribute to open source directly, and formed Gitea Limited so they could pay for support, hosting and an enterprise version, with the income funding contributors.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    Forked from Gogs in November; announced December 8; Gitea 1.0 released December 23

  2. 2022

    Gitea Limited formed to steward the project (October 24); Forgejo forks off

  3. 2023

    Gitea Actions arrives as a preview in 1.19 (March 20); Gitea Cloud announced (November 27)

  4. 2024

    CommitGo launches the paid Gitea Enterprise (March 11)

  5. 2026

    Gitea 28.0.0 drops the “1.” prefix (September 30); 28.2.0 released October 18

Sources15 · facts checked 20 October 2026

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