Gitea Has a Free Self-Hosted Git Platform — Lightweight GitHub Alternative

#git #opensource #devops #selfhosted

Gitea is a painless, self-hosted Git service — think GitHub but on your own server.

What You Get for Free

Git hosting — repositories, branches, tags, releases
Issue tracking — labels, milestones, projects, kanban boards
Pull requests — code review, merge strategies, CI status checks
CI/CD — Gitea Actions (GitHub Actions compatible!)
Package registry — npm, PyPI, Docker, Maven, NuGet, and more
Wiki — per-repository documentation
Organizations & teams — fine-grained access control
Webhooks & API — full REST and GraphQL APIs

Quick Start

# Docker (easiest)
docker run -d --name gitea -p 3000:3000 -p 2222:22 \
  -v gitea-data:/data gitea/gitea:latest

# Or binary (single file, ~100MB)
wget -O gitea https://dl.gitea.com/gitea/latest/gitea-linux-amd64
chmod +x gitea && ./gitea web

Why Developers Choose It

GitHub is great but not everyone can use cloud Git (compliance, air-gapped networks, cost):

Single binary — easier than GitLab (which needs 4GB+ RAM)
GitHub Actions compatible — reuse existing workflows
Runs on a Raspberry Pi — minimal resource requirements
No telemetry — your code stays private

A fintech company couldn't use GitHub due to compliance requirements. They deployed Gitea on-premise in 15 minutes — their developers got the GitHub-like experience they wanted, with GitHub Actions compatibility so they didn't rewrite CI pipelines.