Compare / Gitea vs Forgejo
Gitea vs Forgejo
Pick Forgejo if you want the community-run hard fork and the published GitHub/Bitbucket stack. Pick Gitea if you already operate that lineage and want MIT.
Facts checked 17 Oct 2026. License, language, and GitHub activity come from the catalog or the project's own repo. "Not in the catalog row" means the public catalog dump does not store that number.
Gitea in the catalog Forgejo in the catalogStart on Railway
How they compare
| Gitea | Forgejo | |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT License (catalog) source | GPL-3.0 (catalog; Codeberg upstream) source |
| Language | Go (catalog) | Go (catalog) |
| GitHub activity | 58,536 stars in the catalog source | 5,660 stars on Codeberg (catalog) source |
| Self-host | MIT forge with Actions-shaped CI. | Published as /stacks/forgejo-git. Community-run Gitea hard fork. |
| Best for | CI beside the git host if you already operate Gitea. | The git host plus CI beside the repo. |
Self-hosting and resource needs
Both are a git forge plus optional Actions runners. Forgejo is /stacks/forgejo-git (upstream on Codeberg). Gitea is MIT (go-gitea/gitea). CircleCI YAML and GitHub Actions marketplace actions will not run unchanged. Pipelines can sit on /stacks/woodpecker-ci.
FAQ
- Forgejo or Gitea?
- Forgejo if you want the community-run forge and Actions. Gitea if you already operate that stack. Pick one. That is the stack FAQ.
- What about Pipelines?
- Forgejo Actions or Woodpecker. See /compare/woodpecker-vs-jenkins for the CI engine.
- Are these free?
- Gitea is MIT. Forgejo is GPL-3.0. You pay a volume and any runner.
- How do I deploy it?
- Open /stacks/forgejo-git. Database + a volume for repositories. Lock registration.
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