Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

GitLab VS Gitea

Compare GitLab VS Gitea and see what are their differences

GitLab logo GitLab

Create, review and deploy code together with GitLab open source git repo management software | GitLab

Gitea logo Gitea

A painless self-hosted Git service
  • GitLab Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17
  • Gitea Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-20

GitLab

Release Date
2014 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Dmitriy Zaporozhets
Employees
1,000 - 1,999

Gitea

Website
gitea.io
Pricing URL
-
Release Date
-

GitLab features and specs

  • Integrated DevOps Platform
    GitLab provides a single application for the entire DevOps lifecycle, which simplifies the workflow and reduces the need for multiple tools.
  • CI/CD Capabilities
    It offers powerful Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) features, enabling automated testing and deployment.
  • Self-Hosted and SaaS Options
    GitLab can be hosted on your own servers or used as a cloud-hosted service, providing flexibility depending on your needs.
  • Strong Security Features
    GitLab includes various security features such as code quality analysis, vulnerability management, and compliance management.
  • Robust Community and Support
    There is a large community and extensive documentation available, along with professional support options.

Possible disadvantages of GitLab

  • Complexity for New Users
    The extensive features and functionalities can be overwhelming for newcomers, requiring a steep learning curve.
  • Resource Intensive
    Self-hosting a GitLab instance requires substantial server resources, which can be costly.
  • Price
    While there is a free tier, the advanced features are part of the paid plans, which can be expensive for small teams or startups.
  • User Interface
    Some users find the interface less intuitive and harder to navigate compared to other platforms like GitHub.
  • Performance Issues
    Large repositories or high usage can sometimes lead to performance issues, especially on self-hosted instances.

Gitea features and specs

  • Open Source
    Gitea is open source, allowing users to freely inspect, modify, and contribute to its codebase. This fosters transparency and community-driven development.
  • Lightweight
    Gitea is designed to be lightweight, making it easy to run even on resource-limited systems. This makes it ideal for self-hosted environments.
  • Easy Installation
    Gitea offers a straightforward installation process, making it simple for users to get up and running quickly without complex setup procedures.
  • Rich Feature Set
    Despite being lightweight, Gitea provides a robust feature set, including issue tracking, pull requests, and continuous integration support, which covers the majority of use cases.
  • Active Community
    Gitea has an active and growing community, which contributes to its development and provides support through forums, documentation, and tutorials.
  • Customizable
    Gitea allows for extensive customization through configuration options and extensions, enabling users to tailor the platform to their specific needs.
  • Self-Hosting
    Users have full control over their repositories and data when self-hosting Gitea, which enhances privacy and security compared to third-party hosting services.

Possible disadvantages of Gitea

  • Limited Enterprise Features
    Gitea may lack some advanced enterprise features found in other platforms like GitHub Enterprise or GitLab, such as advanced permissions management and extensive integrations.
  • Smaller Ecosystem
    Compared to larger platforms like GitHub, Gitea has a smaller ecosystem of plugins and integrations, which may limit certain functionalities.
  • Community Support
    While Gitea has an active community, it lacks the formal, professional support options available from larger commercial services, which might be a drawback for businesses seeking guaranteed support.
  • Learning Curve
    New users may experience a learning curve when transitioning to Gitea, especially if they are accustomed to other platforms with different workflows and interfaces.
  • Scalability Concerns
    For very large projects or organizations, Gitea may face scalability issues, as it is designed to be lightweight and may not handle extremely large loads as well as some competitors.
  • Update Management
    Users are responsible for managing Gitea updates and server maintenance when self-hosting, which requires additional administrative effort compared to cloud-hosted solutions.

GitLab videos

Introduction to GitLab Workflow

More videos:

  • Review - GitLab Review App Working Session

Gitea videos

GITEA REVIEW ⭐ TUTORIAL 👨 RUN YOUR OWN GIT SERVER 💻 $50 FREEBIE 💰

More videos:

  • Review - Migrate to a Microsoft Github Alternative: Gitea
  • Review - Gitea - Git with a cup of tea - Installation and Configuration

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to GitLab and Gitea)
Code Collaboration
67 67%
33% 33
Git
65 65%
35% 35
Software Development
71 71%
29% 29
Project Management
82 82%
18% 18

User comments

Share your experience with using GitLab and Gitea. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare GitLab and Gitea

GitLab Reviews

  1. Reinhard
    · Boss at CLOUD Meister ·
    perfect for Freelancers!

The Top 11 Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools
GitLab’s in-context testing solution simplifies the development process by automating both application and infrastructure management on a single platform.Why We Picked GitLab: We like GitLab’s automation of testing and compliance across development workflows. Its in-context testing minimizes license costs and reduces the learning curve.
The Top 10 GitHub Alternatives
GitLab is a web-based DevSecOps (take that, Call of Duty) platform that allows software development teams to plan, build, and ship secure code all in one application. GitLab offers a range of features and tools to support the entire software development lifecycle, from project planning and source code management to continuous integration, delivery, and deployment.
The Best Alternatives to Jenkins for Developers
CI/CD GitLab, as a complete DevOps platform, provides an integrated CI/CD solution along with its other features. If your team is already using GitLab for controlling versions and managing projects, the addition of GitLab CI/CD can be very smooth. The offering in CI/CD by GitLab is quite customizable and it backs up many programming languages as well as application test...
Source: morninglif.com
Top 7 GitHub Alternatives You Should Know (2024)
Most of the listed alternatives offer free tier plans for individuals or small teams. Tools like GitLab and Bitbucket allow users to host unlimited repositories without cost.
Source: snappify.com
Best GitHub Alternatives for Developers in 2023
While GitLab features an extensive set of capabilities, this can also serve as a weakness since beginners may find the developer tool overwhelming to begin with. The user interface compounds this issue by being outdated and unintuitive. GitLab could benefit from more third-party integrations, and its performance tends to struggle when dealing with large repositories or CI/CD...

Gitea Reviews

The Top 10 GitHub Alternatives
Gitea is a painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service that includes Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry, and CI/CD. It is similar to GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab. Gitea was forked from Gogs originally and almost all the code has been changed.
Top 7 GitHub Alternatives You Should Know (2024)
Gitea is a lightweight, fast, and reliable DevOps platform providing development teams with essential version control and collaboration features. k
Source: snappify.com
Let's Make Sure Github Doesn't Become the only Option
The Pull Request workflow is so dominant now that it’s considered the default path for code to permanently enter into a repository. You can see a similar features in GitHub’s smaller competition Codeberg, GitLab, BitBucket, and Gitea. These competitors don’t offer other, major code collaboration tools, and their Pull Request-like features aren’t just there to help users come...
Gitea - Alternative to GitLab and GitHub
There are still plenty of things you might want centralized on a server somewhere, but it seems like a lot of the value add of GitHub, GitLab, and now Gitea is in making git repos easier to manage and interact with.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, GitLab should be more popular than Gitea. It has been mentiond 132 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

GitLab mentions (132)

  • Open Source Funding: Strategies, Case Studies, and Best Practices
    In this article, we explore funding methods that empower projects such as Red Hat, GitLab, and Blender. Our discussion focuses on overlaying robust financial models with community-led efforts while incorporating advanced technologies like blockchain and smart contracts for secure, transparent fund distribution. With clear definitions, tables, bullet lists, and real-world examples, we aim to provide a holistic view... - Source: dev.to / 26 days ago
  • The Hidden Challenges of Building with AWS
    💡** My Take:** If you’re not ready to spend hours debugging AWS configurations, you might want to consider other cloud options, such as DigitalOcean or Gitlab for CI/CD. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Understanding Open Source Developer Support Networks
    The foundation of OSS is its community. OSDSNs offer platforms like GitHub and GitLab that encourage communication and collaboration, creating a sense of belonging among developers. These platforms are essential for managing projects and enhancing motivation within the community. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Navigating the Financial Landscape of Open Source Projects
    The open core model involves offering a core open-source product while providing premium features as part of a separate, paid product. This model encourages community involvement by allowing free access to the foundational version. Meanwhile, it supports sustainability by charging for advanced features tailored to specific market needs. GitLab exemplifies this model, offering a free version alongside premium... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Navigating Financial Models for Open Source Projects
    Projects can also monetize by selling complementary products, such as plugins or premium add-ons. Platforms like GitLab leverage this model by offering advanced features for a fee. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
View more

Gitea mentions (60)

  • Beware Offers of “Help” with Your Projects
    This reminds me of Gogs [0], where the original author refused a lot of good ideas and improvements, eventually leading to a fork [1] that's now a lot more popular and active than the original. [0] https://gogs.io/ [1] https://gitea.io/en-us/. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Incident with Issues and Pull Requests
    Yes, we do this using https://gitea.io/en-us/ on a private server. Firewall, backups and a replica running for most projects. Github is only used when it's required by a stakeholder. - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Let's Make Sure GitHub Doesn't Become the Only Option
    There's a number of places out there, some of which also support alternatives to Git itself. By no means a complete list and in no particular order: GitLab - https://about.gitlab.com/ Sourcehut - https://sourcehut.org/ Codeberg - https://codeberg.org/ Launchpad - https://launchpad.net/ Debian Salsa - https://salsa.debian.org/public Pagure - https://pagure.io/pagure For self hsoted options, there's these below... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • If you're on DSM 6 and still waiting for an update on the GitLab package, don't bother
    And if you need GitLab (for runner, etc...) then it's not too bad to run in Docker. But if anyone is looking for a somewhat simpler git solution, gitea is pretty great. Source: about 2 years ago
  • OpenBSD Upgrade 7.2 to 7.3
    Check: Configuration and syntax changes and Special packages. The latter includes changes on PostgreSQL, Python and Gitea. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing GitLab and Gitea, you can also consider the following products

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

BitBucket - Bitbucket is a free code hosting site for Mercurial and Git. Manage your development with a hosted wiki, issue tracker and source code.

Jira - The #1 software development tool used by agile teams. Jira Software is built for every member of your software team to plan, track, and release great software.

Gogs - A painless self-hosted Git service written in Go

SourceForge - The Complete Open-Source and Business Software Platform.

GitBucket - GitBucket is the easily installable open-source GitHub clone written with Scala.