Forgejo vs GitHub vs GitLab vs Gitea

There is a fundamental difference between hosting open-source projects and storing your company's crown jewels. For open source, GitHub's ecosystem effect is unmatched: the network of contributors, issues, and integrations creates real gravity. But for private repositories, where confidentiality, integrity, and availability matter to you and your customers, the playing field is much more level.

This page compares Codey (Managed Forgejo) with GitHub, GitLab SaaS, and self-hosted Gitea across the factors that matter most to European engineering teams managing proprietary code.

Quick comparison

Forgejo, Gitea, and Gogs - the lineage

Understanding where Forgejo comes from helps explain why it is actively maintained and trusted for production use.

Gogs was started in 2014 as a lightweight, self-hosted Git service written in Go. It gained wide adoption for its simplicity and low resource use.

Gitea was created in 2016 as a community fork of Gogs after contributors felt that the Gogs project was not accepting enough outside contributions. Gitea introduced a more open governance model and accelerated development.

Forgejo was created in 2022 as a fork of Gitea, driven by governance concerns after the Gitea project transferred trademark ownership to a private company without community consultation. Forgejo operates under Codeberg e.V., a German non-profit, with a fully open governance structure.

Forgejo and Gitea remain closely related. Migration from Gitea to Forgejo is straightforward - Forgejo is API-compatible with Gitea, and existing Gitea repositories, users, and settings can be imported directly.

This lineage demonstrates data sovereignty in practice: when a community disagrees with the direction of a project, they can (and successfully have) forked it and taken full control of their code and data. Your source code is never held hostage by a single vendor's governance decisions.

What about Codeberg?

If your project is open source, Codeberg.org offers free Forgejo hosting under the same non-profit (Codeberg e.V.) that stewards Forgejo development. It is a great home for community projects. For private repositories requiring a dedicated instance, SLA, chosen data location, and Swiss operations, that is what Codey provides.

GitHub

GitHub is the best-known code hosting platform, largely because of the open-source world. It hosts the majority of public repositories and has deep integrations with the wider developer tooling ecosystem.

Strengths:

GitHub Actions has a mature marketplace with thousands of reusable workflows. Integration with npm, the GitHub Container Registry, GitHub Pages, and GitHub Copilot creates a cohesive developer environment. Pull request tooling, code review workflows, and project management features are polished. For open-source projects, public repositories are free with generous CI minutes.

Limitations:

GitHub is owned by Microsoft, a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. US authorities can compel access to data stored on GitHub infrastructure regardless of which region it is hosted in.

Since the Microsoft acquisition, GitHub has experienced increasing reliability issues. In April 2026, well-known open-source developer Mitchell Hashimoto announced that he and the Ghostty project would leave GitHub due to persistent quality problems.

Per-seat pricing at $4/user (Team) and $21/user (Enterprise) scales with headcount. Teams with 20 or more developers quickly exceed the cost of a dedicated Forgejo instance. GitHub Enterprise Server starts at $250K/year, making it inaccessible for most organisations. There is no affordable self-hosted option.

When to choose GitHub:

• Your project is open-source and the community expects GitHub presence
• Your team relies on extensive GitHub Actions marketplace integrations (Forgejo Actions is compatible with the workflow syntax, but the marketplace ecosystem is GitHub-exclusive)
• US jurisdiction is acceptable for your organisation

GitLab

GitLab provides an integrated DevSecOps platform with source control, CI/CD, container registry, security scanning, and project management in one product. One of GitLab's key strengths is that the full platform is available self-hosted. See gitlab.ch for managed GitLab hosted in Europe.

Strengths:

GitLab CI/CD is mature and configurable, with native Kubernetes deployment targets and built-in security scanning (SAST, DAST, dependency scanning). The open-core Community Edition is MIT-licensed and self-hostable. GitLab has EU-based sales and support operations. For organisations that need a single DevSecOps platform with features beyond what Forgejo or Gitea offer (security scanning, compliance pipelines, advanced project management), GitLab covers a wide surface area.

Limitations:

GitLab SaaS (gitlab.com) is operated by a US company and does not offer the same data sovereignty as a self-hosted instance. Premium tier is $29/user/month and Ultimate is $99/user/month. These costs compound for larger engineering teams. Feature complexity can slow onboarding for teams that only need code hosting and basic CI.

When to choose GitLab:

• You need built-in DevSecOps features (security scanning, compliance tooling) not present in Forgejo or Gitea
• You want the full platform self-hosted in Europe. See gitlab.ch for managed GitLab with Swiss operations

Gitea (self-hosted)

Gitea is a lightweight, MIT-licensed Git hosting application that you deploy and operate on your own infrastructure.

Strengths:

Gitea is free to use and runs on modest hardware - a small VM or a Raspberry Pi is sufficient for small teams. As the direct predecessor to Forgejo, it shares the same familiar UI and most API endpoints. Gitea Actions provides GitHub Actions-compatible CI/CD. Full admin access means you can configure every aspect of the deployment.

Limitations:

Self-hosting Gitea means you are responsible for backups, upgrades, availability, and security patching. A production deployment needs monitoring, tested restore procedures, and someone available when the host goes down. Gitea governance has been questioned since the trademark incident in 2022. Forgejo has since attracted more active community contributors.

When to choose Gitea (self-hosted):

• You have the operational capacity to manage the instance
• Your infrastructure policy requires on-premises deployment
• You want a migration path to Forgejo later (the two are compatible)

Which option fits?

Choose Codey if you want a dedicated Forgejo instance in the EU without the overhead of running it yourself. Fixed monthly pricing means costs do not grow with headcount.

Choose GitHub if your project is open-source, your team relies on the GitHub Actions marketplace, and US jurisdiction is acceptable.

Choose GitLab if you need integrated DevSecOps features (security scanning, compliance pipelines) not present in Forgejo. For a managed, EU-hosted GitLab instance, see gitlab.ch.

Choose Gitea self-hosted if you have dedicated ops capacity, need on-premises deployment, and want full control over every configuration detail.

Next steps

Ready to move your team to a dedicated, EU-hosted Forgejo instance? Get started with Codey from CHF/EUR 19/month.