I'm currently using forgejo and have no complaints.
Depending on your requirements, you might also consider just using regular git and ssh on a central server somewhere.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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How about Fossil ??
Basically it's an alternative to Git itself, has commands similar to git but with an added bonus of having Github-like features, like:
- Bug-tracker
- Wiki System
- Ticketting system
- Forum + Chat
- Web-Server
Best part !! It's just one file & the website I linked is a self-hosted instance
Came into the thread just to say this. Very happy and thankful you mentioned it already. I think fossil is THE underrated vcs.
I'd like to mention https://chiselapp.com/, since OP's wish is, AFAICT, to have a service that's hosted elsewhere.
Not what you want probably but Tangled.sh
tightly-knit
social coding. tangled is new social-enabled git collaboration platform built on atproto. we envision a place where developers have complete ownership of their code, open source communities can freely self-govern and most importantly, coding can be social and fun again.
Forgejo all the way
Yup, it's pretty easy to set up, and since its runners are basically ripped from GitHub, you can piggy back of that documentation.
You asked for a service, but listed software. The latest FOSS software option is Forgejo, you should use it instead of others for all the reasons mentioned. However, if you're looking for a service, Codeberg runs a very popular Forgejo instance as a service.
Forgejo - actively developed open source. It's what powers Codeberg. Easy to set up and manage with Docker. I moved to it from Gogs and skipped Gitea after reading about the forks.
I use Forgejo for my private git repos but in all honesty, it's massive overkill for my needs.
+1 for Forgejo
+1 for Forgejo!
Just set it up with Docker this past week, it was fairly straightforward and has been working well since
Gogs is the original. Gitea is a fork because the dev of Gogs wasn't taking community input (I think that was the reasoning behind it). Forgejo is a fork of gitea because some folks didn't like gitea forming a for profit corporation (Or something to that effect).
As far as day to day use they're all fairly similar, though it's been a long time since I used Gogs.
It's not just the for-profit corporation, there's also governance issues. Basically, the community elected certain positions and then had the rug pulled out from them such that no elections would be held again.
In the name of the Gitea Community who elected you last year, we welcome the creation of a for-profit company that allows you to make a living out of Gitea.
[...]
We believed you when you promised to pass along the ownership of the Gitea project to your elected successors. This promise is part of an essential bond between you and the strong Community of volunteers, as well as all those who rely upon our collective efforts.
With that in mind, you can understand our surprise when we learned on October 25th, 2022 that both the domains and the trademark were transferred to a for-profit company without our knowledge or approval.
Thanks, I knew there was a bit more to it but hadn't followed it all that closely.
IMO, the Gogs dev was correct. If you look at that community input and what Gitea became, I was glad to use the version that rejected it.
But I don't know how it compares with Forgejo.
what's the problem with gitea? I never used gogs so I can't compare it
The added features made it harder to deploy, came with some bugs, and overall traded a simple design for community-oriented features that IMO were a negative value overall.
made it harder to deploy? Isn't it still just a single binary, a config file and a directory for data?
bugs are inevitable for evolving software.
which community oriented features do you mean? are they in the way, or is it just that you don't need them?
It’s Gitea with some security fixes and community input, as open source software should be.
Used Gitea for a while, and decided to switch to Forgejo before the hard fork split (no more code from Gitea), been using it since, In my opinion both work well, but prefer Forgejo.
The things you're describing aren't really version control systems themselves. Git is a version control system; these are an ecosystem of web-based tools surrounding that version control system.
I don't know if there's a good term for these.
kagis
Wikipedia calls them "forges":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)
In free and open-source software (FOSS) development communities, a forge is a web-based collaborative software platform for both developing and sharing computer applications.
For software developers it is an online service to host the tools they need to work and communicate with their coworkers. It provides a workflow to propose modifications and engage in discussions. The goal is to reach an agreement that will allow these modifications to be merged into the software repository.
For users, a forge is a repository of computer applications, a place where bugs can be reported, a channel to be informed of security issues, etc.
The source code itself is stored in a revision control system and linked to a wide range of services such as a code review, bug database, continuous integration, etc. When a development community forks, it duplicates the content of the forge and is then able to modify it without asking permission. A community may rely on services scattered on multiple forges: they are not necessarily hosted under the same domain.
Sorry for the off-topic question, but this has been driving me crazy.
Is “kagis” the verb for using the search engine “kagi”? For the longest time I’ve been interpreting it as a “dejected sigh” emotional expression.
Yes!
I guess it would be more akin to a "source code hosting service," but that would imply that I intend to open it to the internet (which isn't necessarily the case).
I use Forgejo mostly for code archiving but anything that requires CI/CD, like personal code projects, i use OneDev. No extra setup for pipeline, batteries included
You're missing GitLab. I'd be looking at GitLab or Forgejo.
But you might not need this. When you access a private Git repository, you're normally connecting over SSH and authenticating using SSH keys. By default, if you have Git installed on a server you can SSH to and you have a Git repository on that server in a location you can access, you can use that server as a Git remote. You only really want one these services if you want the CI pipelines or collaboration tools.
Having a web UI is useful even if you're not using the extra tools. Not mandatory of course, but nice.
I feel like you made it sound a bit backwards :)
There's nothing to install on a "git server", git doesn't have a server component. You can point your git client to a remote place where it can store its files using SSH. But you don't install anything on the server for this.
Which is why self hosting a git remote is super easy. All you need is a server with ssh and a little bit of storage.
If you just want to sync code between different computers and have a backup, that's all you need.
Git does have a server component. When git connects to an ssh remote it executes an ssh command that needs to be present.
This is not true. There are lots of places where ssh/vpn is blocked by a firewall while https usually is allowed. So if you want to access/push code while travelling it might be really helpful to have https access to the repo. That was the only reason for me to set up gitlab years ago.
Those 3 are all fairly similar. Here are some others I can think of:
- Gitlab: many features, complex, pr workflow.
- Forgejo / Gogs: simpler, github inspired interface, pr workflow.
- Radicle: peer to peer, idk much more...
- Sourcehut: minimal (non-github) interface, very modular, email workflow.
- Cgit / Gitweb / etc.: just a git interface, no specific workflow.
If you're not using any of the additional features, cgit should be enough. If you're planning on collaborating with others, probably Forgejo would be better.
You can also use individual components of sourcehut, if you want a git web interface with just issue tracking, ci, or wiki, for example.
A pro of Sourcehut is that EVERYTHING can be done by email. So, if you use their issue tracker and want other people to be able to submit issues, they can do it without making an account.
Sourcehut also supports Mercurial, so you also have an option to the herd mentality.
Sourcehut also has zero, or almost zero, JavaScript in the interface, so it doesn't suck
Sourcehut is also componentized, so you can mix and match the pieces you want or need:
- VCS hosting
- masking list management
- issue management
- build server
- man server
Sourcehut is by far the best hosted VCS option at the moment. The Mercurial support alone puts it miles ahead of the others, which are all hobbled by tight coupling to git.
If you are not wed to git, and are willing to try something else, why not give Fossil SCM a try. It's created and maintained by the creator of SQLite. It's a single executable that provides everything for modern source code management, including a website, and even has an official docker file that just works.
Issue tracking, forum support, email, it's all there, in a single executable that can serve as both the front and back end depending on how you launch it. And it's a smaller install than git by itself.
My only input is gitlab is very complicated, never used the others
To install gitlab:
- Yum install omnibus-gitlab
Done.
maybe the installation is simple, but the whole thing is still a beast and has tons of different services and does a lot of stuff. i prefer forgejo because of it's simplicity (still not super easy) and it takes less resources.
I used it for a while. It eats up half your server just by existing ^^is a good system for the time, but now we have better alternatives.