Forgejo — A free, self-hosted lightweight software forge for Git repositories, issues, and CI, forked from Gitea to stay community-governed.
By Noahlast updated pricing verified
Forgejo screenshots & video
Forgejo in 20 seconds
Best for: developers and organizations that want a GitHub-style forge on self-hosted infrastructure, governed by a community rather than a company
Pricing: Free and open source with no paid tier; cost is limited to whatever server or VPS you self-host it on.
- Forgejo is a free, open source, self-hosted software forge forked from Gitea in 2022.
- Forgejo has no paid tier or official managed hosting; it must be self-hosted.
- Forgejo Actions provides GitHub Actions-compatible CI/CD.
- Forgejo's canonical source repository is hosted on Codeberg, not GitHub, by deliberate project choice.
- Forgejo requires substantially less CPU and memory than GitLab to self-host.
Limitations: No official managed hosting; every deployment is self-hosted and self-maintained.; No official GitHub mirror, which can hurt discoverability for developers who default to GitHub search.; Smaller integration ecosystem than GitHub or GitLab.
Top alternatives: Gitea, GitLab, GitHub, Gogs, Bitbucket — full list
What is Forgejo?
Forgejo is a self-hosted software forge: it hosts Git repositories, issue trackers, pull requests, wikis, and CI/CD pipelines (via Forgejo Actions, a GitHub Actions-compatible runner) on infrastructure you control. It was forked from Gitea in 2022 after governance disagreements, specifically to guarantee the project stays community-governed and can never be relicensed away from free software. Forgejo targets developers and organizations that want the collaboration workflow of GitHub or GitLab, pull requests, issue boards, code review, without depending on a third party to host their code. Its main technical differentiator is resource efficiency: Forgejo runs comfortably on a small VPS or Raspberry Pi where GitLab would require several gigabytes of RAM. The project explicitly avoids an official GitHub mirror by design, choosing to host its own canonical source on Codeberg, a nonprofit instance of Forgejo itself, as a statement of independence from centralized, VC-backed platforms.
Forgejo is a self-hosted software forge for hosting Git repositories, tracking issues and pull requests, and running CI, built as a community-governed fork of Gitea. It is aimed at developers and organizations that want a GitHub- or GitLab-style workflow on their own infrastructure without a corporate-controlled roadmap, and it runs with a fraction of the CPU and memory GitLab requires. Forgejo is entirely free and open source with no paid tier or hosted SaaS offering from the project itself; production instances are typically self-hosted or accessed through community-run services like Codeberg.
Standout feature: Runs with dramatically lower CPU and memory requirements than GitLab, making it practical to self-host on a small VPS or single-board computer while still offering pull requests, issues, and GitHub Actions-compatible CI.
Biggest weakness: Self-hosting is entirely on the user: there is no official managed cloud offering, so teams must handle their own updates, backups, and scaling, and the project deliberately has no official GitHub mirror, which can surprise developers used to finding a project's canonical repo there.
Pros
- Fully free and open source with no paid tier, feature gating, or seat limits.
- Runs on far less CPU and memory than GitLab, practical for a small VPS or home server.
- Forgejo Actions provides GitHub Actions-compatible CI/CD without a third-party runner.
- Community governance structure prevents the project from being acquired or relicensed away from free software.
Cons
- No official managed hosting from the Forgejo project; teams must self-host and maintain their own instance.
- No official GitHub mirror by design, which can make discovery harder for developers who default to searching GitHub.
- Smaller plugin and integration ecosystem than GitHub or GitLab.
- Migrating an existing GitHub or GitLab organization's issues, wikis, and CI configuration requires manual work.
Forgejo pricing
Free · verified from the vendor's pricing page
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | Free | Free and open source software; install on your own server or VPS. No paid tier or hosted SaaS plan is sold by the Forgejo project itself. |
What reviewers say
No third-party review scores on file yet.