Gitea vs GitLab CE: which one to choose in 2026?
Both are open source alternatives to GitHub. We compare license, tech stack and features to help you decide which fits your team best.
| Gitea | GitLab CE | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Dev Tools | Dev Tools |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 46k | 24k |
| Tech stack | Go, PostgreSQL | Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis |
| Replaces | GitHub | GitHub |
Gitea has more GitHub stars, which usually indicates a larger community (not necessarily that it's the best option for your use case).
Gitea
Lightweight Git platform, a self-hosted alternative to GitHub.
Pros
- Runs perfectly on a 1GB RAM VPS
Things to consider
- Smaller integration ecosystem than GitHub
GitLab CE
Complete DevOps platform (Git + CI/CD), an alternative to GitHub.
Pros
- The whole DevOps cycle in a single platform
Things to consider
- Needs quite a bit more RAM than Gitea (4GB+ recommended)
Key features
Gitea
- Built-in issues, PRs and wiki
- Gitea Actions compatible with GitHub Actions
- Very low resource usage
GitLab CE
- Built-in CI/CD, no external tools needed
- Own container registry
- Issue and epic management