Gitea — Lightweight Self-Hosted Git Service

What Gitea Does

Gitea provides a full software development lifecycle:

• Git Hosting: Repository management with branch protection, webhooks, and deploy keys
• Code Review: Pull requests with inline comments, reviews, approvals, and merge strategies
• Issue Tracking: Issues with labels, milestones, projects, and kanban boards
• CI/CD: Gitea Actions (GitHub Actions compatible) for automated workflows
• Package Registry: Host Docker images, npm, Maven, PyPI, NuGet, and more
• Wiki: Built-in wiki for project documentation
• Organizations & Teams: Multi-user with organization structure and team permissions

Architecture

┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│  Web UI      │────▶│  Gitea       │────▶│  SQLite /    │
│  (Go + Vue)  │     │  Server (Go) │     │  PostgreSQL /│
└──────────────┘     └──────┬───────┘     │  MySQL       │
                            │             └──────────────┘
                     ┌──────┴───────┐
                     │  Git Repos   │
                     │  (Filesystem)│
                     └──────────────┘

Gitea runs as a single binary with embedded web server and Git operations. It supports SQLite (zero-config), PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MSSQL as database backends.

Installation Options

Docker (Recommended)

services:
  gitea:
    image: gitea/gitea:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"    # Web UI
      - "2222:22"      # SSH
    environment:
      GITEA__database__DB_TYPE: postgres
      GITEA__database__HOST: db:5432
      GITEA__database__NAME: gitea
      GITEA__database__USER: gitea
      GITEA__database__PASSWD: gitea
    volumes:
      - gitea-data:/data
    depends_on:
      - db

  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: gitea
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: gitea
      POSTGRES_DB: gitea
    volumes:
      - pg-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  gitea-data:
  pg-data:

Single Binary

# Download and run directly
wget https://dl.gitea.com/gitea/latest/gitea-latest-linux-amd64
chmod +x gitea-latest-linux-amd64
./gitea-latest-linux-amd64 web

Kubernetes with Helm

helm repo add gitea https://dl.gitea.com/charts/
helm install gitea gitea/gitea --namespace gitea --create-namespace

Key Features

Gitea Actions (CI/CD)

Gitea Actions is compatible with GitHub Actions syntax:

# .gitea/workflows/ci.yaml
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test
      - run: npm run build

Package Registry

Host your own packages alongside code:

# Docker registry
docker tag myapp:latest gitea.example.com/org/myapp:latest
docker push gitea.example.com/org/myapp:latest

# npm registry
npm publish --registry=https://gitea.example.com/api/packages/org/npm/

Supported package types: Docker, npm, PyPI, Maven, NuGet, Cargo, Composer, Conan, Conda, Go, Helm, and more.

Migration Tools

Easily migrate from other platforms:

Supported sources:
├── GitHub (repos, issues, PRs, wiki, labels, milestones)
├── GitLab (repos, issues, PRs, labels)
├── Bitbucket
├── Gogs
└── Gitea (other instances)

Resource Comparison

Gitea vs Alternatives

FAQ

Q: Gitea or GitLab? A: If you need a lightweight, low-resource Git service, pick Gitea (150MB RAM vs GitLab's 2GB+). If you need an enterprise DevOps platform (built-in CI/CD, security scanning, container registry), pick GitLab.

Q: How compatible is Gitea Actions with GitHub Actions? A: Most GitHub Actions workflows run on Gitea directly. Common actions like actions/checkout and actions/setup-node are supported. A few actions that depend on GitHub-specific APIs may need adjustment.

Q: Can I migrate from GitHub/GitLab? A: Yes. Gitea has a built-in migration tool that supports one-click migration of repositories, issues, PRs, and wikis from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and more.