{"slug": "forgejo", "name": "Forgejo", "category": "selfhosted", "category_name": "Self-hosted and home server", "description": "Self-hosted, lightweight Git forge with issues, pull requests and CI; a community fork of Gitea.", "recommenders": 69, "commenters": 104, "warners": 4, "score": 65.895, "rising": 34.84, "first": "2025-11-14", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Liked as an easy, lightweight self-hosted Git forge that feels close to GitHub, including its Actions-style CI, and as a fast, reliable way off GitHub's outages.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 73, "neutral": 33, "compare": 4, "warn": 5}, "spark": [0, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 6, 6, 6, 40, 1, 4], "listed": true, "loved": ["Easy self-hosting", "GitHub-like"], "caveat": "Partial compatibility", "short_quote": "We switched our entire product studio to a self hosted Forgejo https://forgejo.org/ and honestly this has been one of our best decisions", "icon": true, "domain": "forgejo.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://forgejo.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Forgejo"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as an easy, lightweight self-hosted Git forge", "cites": [{"id": 789339264, "item_id": 49333704, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333704", "by": "r0b05", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo/Gitea is lightweight and easy to setup.", "excerpt": "Forgejo/Gitea is lightweight and easy to setup.", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789472032, "item_id": 49342002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342002", "by": "xyst", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dead simple to host", "excerpt": "forgejo, self hosted. Dead simple to host, even have it integrated with my pocket id so it\u2019s one less password I have to remember.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789317696, "item_id": 49332356, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332356", "by": "ryuuseijin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo is great to self host.", "excerpt": "Forgejo is great to self host. I have an easy to use template for setting it up on fly.io with backups here: https://forgejo-fly.fly.dev/forgejo-admin/forgejo-fly", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789425216, "item_id": 49339076, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339076", "by": "dumidusw", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's great for lightweight self hosting", "excerpt": "It's great for lightweight self hosting", "context": "", "use_case": "lightweight self hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " that feels close to GitHub, including its Actions-style CI,", "cites": [{"id": 791241440, "item_id": 49452590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49452590", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers", "excerpt": "If you're actively considering self hosting, I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers, actions API is nearly identical to name one similarity of which there are many. Moving essentially becomes one prompt and a coffee later for a small team.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 789313472, "item_id": 49332092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332092", "by": "slackfan", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "excerpt": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789357921, "item_id": 49334870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334870", "by": "Bnjoroge", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo has the closest compatibility with Github Actions though so it's a good off-Github option", "excerpt": "Hopefully a good spot to plug my own project, preloop, which is a drop-in replacement of Github actions(both the runners and control plane) that runs locally or self-hosted in isoalted microvms, and supports debug-on-failure. You can also push to the server, run CI and then optionally create a draft PR. Not quite production-ready yet(for the self-hosted part), but the local part works well. We implement the official ", "context": "", "use_case": "off-GitHub CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " and as a fast, reliable way off GitHub's outages.", "cites": [{"id": 787263184, "item_id": 49203949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203949", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "excerpt": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "GitHub Actions", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 804944256, "item_id": 50309016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309016", "by": "huijzer", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero.", "excerpt": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero. It\u2019s only down when I do maintenance but since I\u2019m not pushing code at the same time it doesn\u2019t matter", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Incident with Actions, Pages, and Webhooks"}, {"id": 787249008, "item_id": 49203063, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203063", "by": "monkaiju", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now.", "excerpt": "Im shocked this is still going on... We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now. Honestly I dont think I've seen a tool I used regularly with such a moat lose it simply because they cant keep the service up. Also its hard to not see a pretty strong correlation between a bunch of these big companies doubling do", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git repos at work", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 789374816, "item_id": 49335926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335926", "by": "sandcat_", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over", "excerpt": "I recently set this up on my homelab, not really expecting to switch to it, more out of interest. But wow, after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over. I\u2019ve now set it up to mirror things automatically to Github if I want to make them public. Using Github at work is painful in comparison. (Also literally just this morning we\u2019ve had to delay a release due to Github being down.)", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " Complaints are scattered: GitHub compatibility is close but not complete,", "cites": [{"id": 789314848, "item_id": 49332178, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332178", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo is more compatible than gitea", "excerpt": "no; gitea and foregjo both support actions-style CI/CD and both serve mostly GH-compatible APIs and have GH-style apps. it's not 100% compatible (forgejo is more compatible than gitea), but many of your workflows might \"just work\" without even renaming the .github folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub Actions-compatible CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789453201, "item_id": 49340825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340825", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs", "excerpt": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs, ime. they have mostly-GH-compatible APIs.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub replacement", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " and running an instance for outside users takes extra configuration work.", "cites": [{"id": 785686673, "item_id": 49105417, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105417", "by": "weitendorf", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I realized this was really only for hobbyists", "excerpt": "There are two that I know of, and neither seem to do a better job at solving my problem of providing a place to host and distribute open source software. I hosted my own forgejo server used by actual other people * very slightly* before it was cool, and just to get started I had to go through this giant list of configs governing important auth/cred stuff and also random ass features and everything else, then I set up", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub is the wrong shape for this new world"}, {"id": 789392784, "item_id": 49337049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337049", "by": "TabTwo", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD.", "excerpt": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD. Hopefully forgejo gets federation in the near future because \u00f6ets face it, opening an issue on Github is easy because you have an user there but you wont get one on my private forgejo instance. Also, a tool like gh for forgejo would be nice. If you want to have an easy way to setup, have a look at https://yunohost.org/ that also offers lots of other nice stuff in its \"app st", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Easy self-hosting", "summary": "Commenters say it is lightweight, easy to install and needs little maintenance.", "quotes": [{"id": 789472032, "item_id": 49342002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342002", "by": "xyst", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dead simple to host", "excerpt": "forgejo, self hosted. Dead simple to host, even have it integrated with my pocket id so it\u2019s one less password I have to remember.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789303728, "item_id": 49331483, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331483", "by": "yogsototh", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I personally host a forgejo instance on a private VPS ; so far almost no maintenance", "excerpt": "I personally host a forgejo instance on a private VPS ; so far almost no maintenance except protecting it from ai-crawlers[#1]. If you don't want the hassle, codeberg.org is a public instance of forgejo. [#1]: https://her.esy.fun/posts/0031-how-i-protect-my-forgejo-instance-from-ai-web-crawlers/index.html I configure my local repositories to push on both Github and my forgejo instance. I am not using the CI much for ", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789460864, "item_id": 49341304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341304", "by": "iamkonstantin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We switched our entire product studio to a self hosted Forgejo https://forgejo.org/ and honestly this has been one of our best decisions", "excerpt": "We switched our entire product studio to a self hosted Forgejo https://forgejo.org/ and honestly this has been one of our best decisions: it's fast, has a great API for bots and automations to use, just a Go project so we've been able to make some tweaks to the runner. Very easy to setup and admin", "context": "product studio", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "GitHub-like", "summary": "Its interface, APIs and Actions-style CI are described as close to GitHub's.", "quotes": [{"id": 791241440, "item_id": 49452590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49452590", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers", "excerpt": "If you're actively considering self hosting, I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers, actions API is nearly identical to name one similarity of which there are many. Moving essentially becomes one prompt and a coffee later for a small team.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 789357921, "item_id": 49334870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334870", "by": "Bnjoroge", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo has the closest compatibility with Github Actions though so it's a good off-Github option", "excerpt": "Hopefully a good spot to plug my own project, preloop, which is a drop-in replacement of Github actions(both the runners and control plane) that runs locally or self-hosted in isoalted microvms, and supports debug-on-failure. You can also push to the server, run CI and then optionally create a draft PR. Not quite production-ready yet(for the self-hosted part), but the local part works well. We implement the official ", "context": "", "use_case": "off-GitHub CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789313472, "item_id": 49332092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332092", "by": "slackfan", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "excerpt": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Speed", "summary": "Users describe it as snappy and very fast in daily use.", "quotes": [{"id": 789374816, "item_id": 49335926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335926", "by": "sandcat_", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over", "excerpt": "I recently set this up on my homelab, not really expecting to switch to it, more out of interest. But wow, after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over. I\u2019ve now set it up to mirror things automatically to Github if I want to make them public. Using Github at work is painful in comparison. (Also literally just this morning we\u2019ve had to delay a release due to Github being down.)", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 787263184, "item_id": 49203949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203949", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "excerpt": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "GitHub Actions", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 789302432, "item_id": 49331402, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331402", "by": "ashton314", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo is splendid.", "excerpt": "Forgejo is splendid. Codeberg is a hosted instance; depending on what you\u2019re developing it may or may not be a good fit for you. But the Forgejo stack itself is decently light-weight to self-host, very fast to use, and is easy to navigate.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Smooth migration", "summary": "Teams and individuals report quick, painless moves from GitHub or Gitea.", "quotes": [{"id": 791744032, "item_id": 49484002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484002", "by": "monkaiju", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I work at a SMB (~60 employees) and we switched to Forgejo in a couple days", "excerpt": "Maybe for big companies that irresponsibly vendor-locked themselves, but I work at a SMB (~60 employees) and we switched to Forgejo in a couple days", "context": "works at a ~60-employee SMB", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bye, Bye GitHub"}, {"id": 789451264, "item_id": 49340704, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340704", "by": "chhs", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I migrated my Gitea instance to Forgejo, it was pretty painless", "excerpt": "I migrated my Gitea instance to Forgejo, it was pretty painless", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "Gitea", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789318656, "item_id": 49332416, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332416", "by": "jm4", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo is great if you don't mind hosting yourself.", "excerpt": "I self host Forgejo on a cheap VPS with hourly borg backups to rsync.net. It's a great system and seems comparable to github, although I'm not a heavy user of actions on either platform. I do use the container registry though. It was a smooth transition and easy to install. I used the docker installation method. Forgejo is great if you don't mind hosting yourself.", "context": "self-hosts on a cheap VPS", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Fewer outages", "summary": "Self-hosters say switching ended the downtime they had with GitHub.", "quotes": [{"id": 804944256, "item_id": 50309016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309016", "by": "huijzer", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero.", "excerpt": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero. It\u2019s only down when I do maintenance but since I\u2019m not pushing code at the same time it doesn\u2019t matter", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Incident with Actions, Pages, and Webhooks"}, {"id": 787249008, "item_id": 49203063, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203063", "by": "monkaiju", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now.", "excerpt": "Im shocked this is still going on... We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now. Honestly I dont think I've seen a tool I used regularly with such a moat lose it simply because they cant keep the service up. Also its hard to not see a pretty strong correlation between a bunch of these big companies doubling do", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git repos at work", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 799911232, "item_id": 49994452, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49994452", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Tangled, Codeberg or self-hosted Forgejo (my approach) or Gitea are all good alternative solutions here.", "excerpt": "I'm surprised people still rely so much on GitHub. Anything I want to (have to*) be able to deploy on a moments notice, for hotfixes and what not, was moved away from Github like a year ago, because of the horrible uptime. Did others not get the memo yet? It's not getting better, if anything it's getting worse. Best time to get off GitHub was yesterday, the second-best day to get off is today. Tangled, Codeberg or se", "context": "deploys hotfixes on short notice", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Incident with Git Operations, Pull Requests and Actions \u2013 Resolved"}]}, {"label": "Non-profit governance", "summary": "Some prefer it because it is developed under a non-profit and is working on federation.", "quotes": [{"id": 784433041, "item_id": 49027065, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027065", "by": "charlie-83", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitea is developed by a for-profit organisation while Forgejo is developed by a non-profit.", "excerpt": "(Disclaimer: I use Gitea daily for work and Codeberg daily for personal stuff. I prefer Codeberg) Gitea is developed by a for-profit organisation while Forgejo is developed by a non-profit. Ability for rug pull is much greater for gitea imo. Gitea (organisation) already develops non-foss software to sit on top of Gitea (software). Gitea requires copyright attributions for contributions so is more able to change the G", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Regret Migrating to Codeberg"}, {"id": 789439120, "item_id": 49339945, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339945", "by": "esseph", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "is developed in the interest of the general public.", "excerpt": "\"Forgejo was created in October 2022 after a for profit company took over the Gitea project. It exists under the umbrella of a non-profit organization, Codeberg e.V. and is developed in the interest of the general public.\" https://forgejo.org/compare-to-gitea/", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789346528, "item_id": 49334158, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334158", "by": "ghewgill", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo is working on federation", "excerpt": "Yes, let's look beyond centralized services for source control (also known as \"developer social media\"). For example, Forgejo is working on federation (https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/main/FederationRoadmap.md) which makes the choice of where to host your code less relevant, because anybody on the federated network will be able to interact with any other repository no matter where it is hos", "context": "", "use_case": "federated code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Has an Availability Problem. Is It Time to Look Elsewhere?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Partial compatibility", "summary": "GitHub API and Actions compatibility is described as mostly there, not 100%.", "quotes": [{"id": 789314848, "item_id": 49332178, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332178", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo is more compatible than gitea", "excerpt": "no; gitea and foregjo both support actions-style CI/CD and both serve mostly GH-compatible APIs and have GH-style apps. it's not 100% compatible (forgejo is more compatible than gitea), but many of your workflows might \"just work\" without even renaming the .github folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub Actions-compatible CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789453201, "item_id": 49340825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340825", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs", "excerpt": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs, ime. they have mostly-GH-compatible APIs.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub replacement", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789357921, "item_id": 49334870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334870", "by": "Bnjoroge", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo has the closest compatibility with Github Actions though so it's a good off-Github option", "excerpt": "Hopefully a good spot to plug my own project, preloop, which is a drop-in replacement of Github actions(both the runners and control plane) that runs locally or self-hosted in isoalted microvms, and supports debug-on-failure. You can also push to the server, run CI and then optionally create a draft PR. Not quite production-ready yet(for the self-hosted part), but the local part works well. We implement the official ", "context": "", "use_case": "off-GitHub CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Setup complexity", "summary": "One commenter found a public multi-user instance required many auth and config decisions.", "quotes": [{"id": 785686673, "item_id": 49105417, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105417", "by": "weitendorf", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I realized this was really only for hobbyists", "excerpt": "There are two that I know of, and neither seem to do a better job at solving my problem of providing a place to host and distribute open source software. I hosted my own forgejo server used by actual other people * very slightly* before it was cool, and just to get started I had to go through this giant list of configs governing important auth/cred stuff and also random ass features and everything else, then I set up", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub is the wrong shape for this new world"}]}, {"label": "No federation yet", "summary": "Outsiders can't easily file issues on a private instance until federation arrives, and a gh-style CLI is missing.", "quotes": [{"id": 789392784, "item_id": 49337049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337049", "by": "TabTwo", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD.", "excerpt": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD. Hopefully forgejo gets federation in the near future because \u00f6ets face it, opening an issue on Github is easy because you have an user there but you wont get one on my private forgejo instance. Also, a tool like gh for forgejo would be nice. If you want to have an easy way to setup, have a look at https://yunohost.org/ that also offers lots of other nice stuff in its \"app st", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Security fix", "summary": "A critical bug let malicious template repositories run processes on the host before it was patched.", "quotes": [{"id": 794354448, "item_id": 49647153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647153", "by": "jzebedee", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "A malicious template repository could be used to read arbitrary data from the Forgejo host, and to execute arbitrary processes on the Forgejo host", "excerpt": "Relevant change: Security bug fixes PR: Critical: fix: prevent template expansion from interfering with git repo initialization. When generating a new repository from a template repository, Forgejo clones the template repository, removes the .git folder, performs variable template expansion on files listed in .forgejo/template, and initializes a new git repository. During this process, variable template expansion cou", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Forgejo <=16.0.3 Critical RCE"}]}, {"label": "Crawler protection", "summary": "A self-hoster's main upkeep was protecting the instance from AI crawlers.", "quotes": [{"id": 789303728, "item_id": 49331483, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331483", "by": "yogsototh", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I personally host a forgejo instance on a private VPS ; so far almost no maintenance", "excerpt": "I personally host a forgejo instance on a private VPS ; so far almost no maintenance except protecting it from ai-crawlers[#1]. If you don't want the hassle, codeberg.org is a public instance of forgejo. [#1]: https://her.esy.fun/posts/0031-how-i-protect-my-forgejo-instance-from-ai-web-crawlers/index.html I configure my local repositories to push on both Github and my forgejo instance. I am not using the CI much for ", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Monolithic design", "summary": "One commenter dislikes that forges like it bundle everything instead of using separate components.", "quotes": [{"id": 789422578, "item_id": 49338911, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338911", "by": "0xbadcafebee", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth from GitHub, GitLab, Forgejo, Gitea, etc.", "excerpt": "I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth from GitHub, GitLab, Forgejo, Gitea, etc. They all attempt to hijack Git itself and become a monolith and single custom interface, rather than independent components that work around the Git repo. I want the Unix philosophy applied to Git and other functions. That way I'm not forced to switch the entire kitchen sink out when some single piece of functionality or hoster ends up br", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}], "who": [{"by": "bengalister", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "justsomehuman", "context": "self-hosts on a Hetzner CAX31", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013881", "date": "2026-10-08"}, {"by": "embedding-shape", "context": "deploys hotfixes on short notice", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49994452", "date": "2026-10-07"}, {"by": "Macha", "context": "runs private instance", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647186", "date": "2026-09-10"}, {"by": "emrearmagan", "context": "plugin author adding Gitea/Forgejo support", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503084", "date": "2026-08-30"}, {"by": "monkaiju", "context": "works at a ~60-employee SMB", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484002", "date": "2026-08-28"}, {"by": "vinnymac", "context": "sysadmin", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456447", "date": "2026-08-26"}, {"by": "robwayne", "context": "runs a Forgejo instance for a small team", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383993", "date": "2026-08-20"}, {"by": "zImPatrick", "context": "self-hosts a git forge", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348336", "date": "2026-08-18"}, {"by": "iamkonstantin", "context": "product studio", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341304", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "solid_fuel", "context": "runs a FreeBSD home server", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341279", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "sandcat_", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335926", "date": "2026-08-17"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for small teams", "for homelabs", "for private repos", "for leaving GitHub"], "use_cases": ["self-hosted git forge", "git hosting", "self-hosted git", "code hosting", "self-hosted code hosting", "off-github ci"], "compared": [{"slug": "github", "name": "GitHub", "co": 49, "switched_from": 16, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "gitea", "name": "Gitea", "co": 46, "switched_from": 5, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "gitlab", "name": "GitLab", "co": 24, "switched_from": 7, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "codeberg", "name": "Codeberg", "co": 31, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "radicle", "name": "Radicle", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "github-actions", "name": "GitHub Actions", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "fossil", "name": "Fossil", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "tangled", "name": "Tangled", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331033", "title": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub", "mentions": 56}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645907", "title": "Forgejo <=16.0.3 Critical RCE", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450722", "title": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49021856", "title": "I Regret Migrating to Codeberg", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48121266", "title": "Why I'm leaving GitHub for Forgejo", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742432", "title": "I Like GitLab", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 3}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 3}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 40, "neutral": 13, "compare": 3, "warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804944256, "item_id": 50309016, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50309016", "by": "huijzer", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero.", "excerpt": "Ever since I switched to Forgejo (could do Gitea or other self-hosted too), my outages have gone down to basically zero. It\u2019s only down when I do maintenance but since I\u2019m not pushing code at the same time it doesn\u2019t matter", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Incident with Actions, Pages, and Webhooks"}, {"id": 801839492, "item_id": 50114968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "forgejo", "excerpt": "I also self host some services: keycloak, forgejo, home assistant, immich, grafana/prometheus, jellyfin, pureftp (to store my surveillance cameras videos), and a vibecoded financial app, and soon hermes agent on a 2023 laptop. I chose to run most of them on Kubernetes since I am used to work with it. I use: - ha-proxy running on the host and istio running inside the cluster for the sni based ingress routing - cert-ma", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800504337, "item_id": 50031521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031521", "by": "Icarusfoundyou", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I then sync the files to a git repo (selfhosted forgejo)", "excerpt": "I use Obsidian with links set to \"path from current file\" and disabled wikilinks. I then sync the files to a git repo (selfhosted forgejo) and with these settings, the links keep working even when looked at through forgejo's web-interface.", "context": "", "use_case": "syncing notes via git", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to move my notes out of Emacs. I failed. Again"}, {"id": 800308594, "item_id": 50019287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50019287", "by": "proxysna", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Forgejo/Gitea as local git server", "excerpt": "Maintenance is not an issue, if vm/pc setup is done correctly. Simple is better in that case. Just a docker-compose or two or three with app data stored directly on disk to be able to move things easily between VM/PC's if needed. If hosted on VPS, set up your containers to be accesible only through VPN and you're good to go. Things i use daily-ish: - Wireguard with wg-easy to access my home network and other way arou", "context": "", "use_case": "local git server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800222103, "item_id": 50013881, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013881", "by": "justsomehuman", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I run the following services / apps.", "excerpt": "Not quite as cheap as $5 but I've been running at Hetzner CAX31 for a couple of years now and I run the following services / apps. Actual Budget - https://github.com/actualbudget/actual AirTrail - https://github.com/johanohly/AirTrail Beszel - https://github.com/henrygd/beszel Coder - https://github.com/coder/coder Crowdsec - https://github.com/crowdsecurity/crowdsec Dawarich - https://github.com/Freika/dawarich Dozz", "context": "self-hosts on a Hetzner CAX31", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800210993, "item_id": 50013187, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013187", "by": "JLO64", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "though I'd need one that works with Forgejo", "excerpt": "I just found out about this an hour ago while browsing the Pi docs. I'm really excited to use this as an alternative to the herdr pi extension as I prefer minimizing the number of extensions I have. Also, this could be great to use with a CI tracker (though I'd need one that works with Forgejo). https://pi.dev/docs/latest/terminal-setup#program-status", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Terminal Protocol for Program Status (OSC 7501)"}, {"id": 799911232, "item_id": 49994452, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49994452", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Tangled, Codeberg or self-hosted Forgejo (my approach) or Gitea are all good alternative solutions here.", "excerpt": "I'm surprised people still rely so much on GitHub. Anything I want to (have to*) be able to deploy on a moments notice, for hotfixes and what not, was moved away from Github like a year ago, because of the horrible uptime. Did others not get the memo yet? It's not getting better, if anything it's getting worse. Best time to get off GitHub was yesterday, the second-best day to get off is today. Tangled, Codeberg or se", "context": "deploys hotfixes on short notice", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Incident with Git Operations, Pull Requests and Actions \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 799837425, "item_id": 49989839, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49989839", "by": "sunaookami", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can also recommend hosting your own Gitea/Forgejo instance, it has an automatic repository mirroring feature", "excerpt": "I can also recommend hosting your own Gitea/Forgejo instance, it has an automatic repository mirroring feature that fetches the repo regularly. I use it to mirror some \"high-risk\" repos.", "context": "", "use_case": "mirroring repos", "switched_from": "", "story": "AnyPS5: Port PS5 binaries to PC without emulation (87% system libraries mapped)"}, {"id": 794354976, "item_id": 49647186, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647186", "by": "Macha", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "if like me you run a private forgejo instance with closed signups and limited repository creation", "excerpt": "Since the release notes is currently unreadable due to codeberg rate limits, the two fixes in the release notes are: https://codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo/pulls/14301: *Critical:* fix: prevent template expansion from interfering with git repo initialization. When generating a new repository from a template repository, Forgejo clones the template repository, removes the `.git` folder, performs variable template expansi", "context": "runs private instance", "use_case": "private git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Forgejo <=16.0.3 Critical RCE"}, {"id": 794354672, "item_id": 49647167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647167", "by": "PaoloBarbolini", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If you are self-hosting Forgejo and haven't done it yet, consider creating a Codeberg account", "excerpt": "If you are self-hosting Forgejo and haven't done it yet, consider creating a Codeberg account and following https://codeberg.org/forgejo/security-announcements/issues", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Forgejo <=16.0.3 Critical RCE"}, {"id": 794354448, "item_id": 49647153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647153", "by": "jzebedee", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "A malicious template repository could be used to read arbitrary data from the Forgejo host, and to execute arbitrary processes on the Forgejo host", "excerpt": "Relevant change: Security bug fixes PR: Critical: fix: prevent template expansion from interfering with git repo initialization. When generating a new repository from a template repository, Forgejo clones the template repository, removes the .git folder, performs variable template expansion on files listed in .forgejo/template, and initializes a new git repository. During this process, variable template expansion cou", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Forgejo <=16.0.3 Critical RCE"}, {"id": 793191584, "item_id": 49574474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49574474", "by": "hum3hum3", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "then to my own self hosted forgejo on hetzner", "excerpt": "I just moved from github to vodeberg then to my own self hosted forgejo on hetzner. I may wait awhile and then try yours.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "vodeberg", "story": "Git hosting that never leaves Europe"}, {"id": 792743589, "item_id": 49546474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "by": "TranquilMarmot", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "code pushed to Forgejo", "excerpt": "I have a server in a closet with a few hard drives attached to it. All of my devices connect to it via Tailscale. I use the wonderful https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest as a web UI around restic. Every night, I back the data up to a Hetzner storage box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ which is only ~$3.50/mo USD for 1TB of data. I have three \"tiers\" of data for myself: 1. Important things I care abo", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 792049345, "item_id": 49503084, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49503084", "by": "emrearmagan", "date": "2026-08-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I only use them for a few private repos myself though", "excerpt": "Quite a few people asked for Gitea/Forgejo support, so I have been working on it the last few weeks. I only use them for a few private repos myself though, so I do love a few people who use it as their daily driver and have some feedback on what works and what doesn't", "context": "plugin author adding Gitea/Forgejo support", "use_case": "private repos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gitea/Forgejo and Neovim"}, {"id": 791744032, "item_id": 49484002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484002", "by": "monkaiju", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I work at a SMB (~60 employees) and we switched to Forgejo in a couple days", "excerpt": "Maybe for big companies that irresponsibly vendor-locked themselves, but I work at a SMB (~60 employees) and we switched to Forgejo in a couple days", "context": "works at a ~60-employee SMB", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bye, Bye GitHub"}, {"id": 791303154, "item_id": 49456447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456447", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "same for all of my self hosted Forgejo instances", "excerpt": "I find this recommendation funny, because I completely agree from a sysadmin perspective. I used to use Gitlab at work, and small teams would run into so many footguns with CI that we had to throw up guardrails to prevent mistakes. Far too many links to gitlab issues that were not fixed even after >8+ years of being open ended up biting us. With GHA I haven't had that experience, and same for all of my self hosted Fo", "context": "sysadmin", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 791244305, "item_id": 49452769, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49452769", "by": "pocksuppet", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "compare", "quote": "thinking of upgrading to Forgejo", "excerpt": "We should worry less about what everyone else uses, and more about what we use. I'm self-hosting Gitea and thinking of upgrading to Forgejo. What are you using?", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 791241440, "item_id": 49452590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49452590", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers", "excerpt": "If you're actively considering self hosting, I recommend giving forgejo a try. The experience is much more similar to what GitHub offers, actions API is nearly identical to name one similarity of which there are many. Moving essentially becomes one prompt and a coffee later for a small team.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 790306273, "item_id": 49394142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49394142", "by": "t0mas88", "date": "2026-08-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "run a local Forgejo instance (just like OP) and have the Dockerised Claude instances work in that", "excerpt": "I've created a simple project for that, except that by default they open PRs on Forgejo/Github/Gitlab. It's open source and the workflows are config files, so you can configure it to allow you to pull from them instead of creating a PR. Source: https://github.com/smithy-ai/smithy-ai One way I use it that is similar to what I think you want is to run a local Forgejo instance (just like OP) and have the Dockerised Clau", "context": "", "use_case": "local git hosting for agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "A self hosted AI software factory"}, {"id": 790143889, "item_id": 49383993, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383993", "by": "robwayne", "date": "2026-08-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I currently run a Forgejo instance for a small team", "excerpt": "Thanks for the insights! > For products you're developing that involve multiple repositories, it's possible to use a \"meta repository\"[1] to establish what's called a login group Gotcha; that makes sense considering how users are handled. > There's some social stuff if you find later that you want it. Fossil development moved from a more traditional mailing list to a self-hosted forum a while ago, but it isn't enable", "context": "runs a Forgejo instance for a small team", "use_case": "team code forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789735969, "item_id": 49358498, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358498", "by": "rcxdude", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "the fact that they had cloned Actions is what persuaded me to drop it", "excerpt": "TBH I looked at forgejo as an alternative to Gitlab and the fact that they had cloned Actions is what persuaded me to drop it. IMO Gitlab's CI has been their killer feature for a while.", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"}, {"id": 789675712, "item_id": 49354732, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354732", "by": "jm4", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Forgejo and there's nothing I miss.", "excerpt": "I dunno. Those features are valuable to somebody. Probably enterprise and government, which is where the money is. They basically get a full stack - and if we're being honest, it's actually pretty damn good aside from the downtime - from one vendor and that's important. The Universal Blue people have done some interesting things with Actions too. I guess if you don't need any of that stuff it's an easy migration for ", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"}, {"id": 789663136, "item_id": 49353946, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353946", "by": "IshKebab", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if I was an enterprise I would definitely be self hosting with Forgejo or Gerrit or whatever", "excerpt": "Yeah and if I was an enterprise I would definitely be self hosting with Forgejo or Gerrit or whatever. But I think for most hobbyists GitHub is still totally fine. I use it quite a lot and the first time I actually witnessed downtime myself was yesterday.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git for enterprise", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"}, {"id": 789626816, "item_id": 49351676, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49351676", "by": "srcreigh", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Re Forgejo actions, I'm just toying around.", "excerpt": "Re Forgejo actions, I'm just toying around. Their v15 release (apr 16) really enabled k8s native runners. They added an ephemeral runner API and a bunch of APIs to get jobs. That's what im using to do k8s autoscaling", "context": "", "use_case": "CI with k8s autoscaling runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789581457, "item_id": 49348841, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348841", "by": "xvilka", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's best to invest all effort into a decentralized solution, like Radicle[1][2] or federated Forgejo[3][4]", "excerpt": "Instead of creating one more centralized alternative, it's best to invest all effort into a decentralized solution, like Radicle[1][2] or federated Forgejo[3][4]. [1] https://radicle.dev/ [2] https://radicle.network/nodes/seed.radicle.dev/rad%3Az3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5 [3] https://forgejo.org/ [4] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/main/FederationRoadmap.md", "context": "", "use_case": "federated code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"}, {"id": 789574800, "item_id": 49348425, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348425", "by": "zImPatrick", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Forgejo, and by extent Codeberg, has the punchcard-like feature", "excerpt": "Forgejo, and by extent Codeberg, has the punchcard-like feature, it\u2018s just hidden under \u201ePublic activity\u201c on the profile page", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789573376, "item_id": 49348336, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348336", "by": "zImPatrick", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Works just fine", "excerpt": "My gitea instance was only ~6 DB migrations beyond where Forgejo was at when I decided to switch, so I just undo\u2018d those and upgraded anyways. Works just fine, but I was really lucky that they weren\u2018t any big migrations. I guess isn\u2018t really as feasible anymore.", "context": "self-hosts a git forge", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "Gitea", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789507729, "item_id": 49344233, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344233", "by": "Jnr", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I did and then rolled back.", "excerpt": "I did and then rolled back. Gitea is far ahead in CI/CD features, which is the main thing I want from my own git forge. And they also seem to keep adding more meaningful features, not just refactoring to keep some federation thing working.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789486080, "item_id": 49342880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342880", "by": "alexfortin", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm very happy to have invested some time and effort to setup my personal Forgejo instance", "excerpt": "Might not be the right move for everyone but I'm very happy to have invested some time and effort to setup my personal Forgejo instance. I've blogged about it too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48978707", "context": "", "use_case": "personal git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789478944, "item_id": 49342434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342434", "by": "sisve", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Have been running self-hosted forgejo for a while now. Work's like a charm.", "excerpt": "Have been running self-hosted forgejo for a while now. Work's like a charm. Easy to use with LLM", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789472032, "item_id": 49342002, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342002", "by": "xyst", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Dead simple to host", "excerpt": "forgejo, self hosted. Dead simple to host, even have it integrated with my pocket id so it\u2019s one less password I have to remember.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789468305, "item_id": 49341769, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341769", "by": "globular-toast", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I accidentally upgraded my Gitea instance beyond the fork which makes this more difficult...", "excerpt": "I accidentally upgraded my Gitea instance beyond the fork which makes this more difficult...", "context": "", "use_case": "migration target from Gitea", "switched_from": "Gitea", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789463649, "item_id": 49341478, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341478", "by": "tensorfoundry", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "this is our stack too", "excerpt": "this is our stack too, we initially ran BuildKite but switched to Woodpecker for Forgeo. Coming from Github there's a few basic things that are missing in woodpekcer that may frustrate you but it's improving regularly.", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789460864, "item_id": 49341304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341304", "by": "iamkonstantin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We switched our entire product studio to a self hosted Forgejo https://forgejo.org/ and honestly this has been one of our best decisions", "excerpt": "We switched our entire product studio to a self hosted Forgejo https://forgejo.org/ and honestly this has been one of our best decisions: it's fast, has a great API for bots and automations to use, just a Go project so we've been able to make some tweaks to the runner. Very easy to setup and admin", "context": "product studio", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789460464, "item_id": 49341279, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341279", "by": "solid_fuel", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's been working fantastically", "excerpt": "I set up Forgejo on my FreeBSD home server the other week, it's been working fantastically. All the features I need, snappy, easy to install. I think ultimately any company that goes this route will start benefiting from an IT team again though - instead of just pushing everything off to SAAS providers.", "context": "runs a FreeBSD home server", "use_case": "home server git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789453201, "item_id": 49340825, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340825", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs", "excerpt": "gitea/forgejo both do an 80% job of covering these needs, ime. they have mostly-GH-compatible APIs.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub replacement", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789452624, "item_id": 49340789, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340789", "by": "prima-facie", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo is great", "excerpt": "For SaaS forges there's also upd.dev launched recently. For self-hosted forges: forgejo is great but also cgit is pretty good for exporting repos. With the recent GitHub fiasco I've split my repos across multiple forges. Git was always supposed to be decentralised so why store everything in one place?", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789451264, "item_id": 49340704, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340704", "by": "chhs", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I migrated my Gitea instance to Forgejo, it was pretty painless", "excerpt": "I migrated my Gitea instance to Forgejo, it was pretty painless", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "Gitea", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789450784, "item_id": 49340674, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340674", "by": "Grombobulous", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Have you looked at migrating to Forgejo?", "excerpt": "Have you looked at migrating to Forgejo? It\u2019s a fork of Gitea though I think it has diverged significantly since the fork.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789446850, "item_id": 49340428, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340428", "by": "sangtd", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "if you want full control and to deploy on your own, consider forgejo", "excerpt": "if you want to work on personal projects and store personal data, use gitLab; if you\u2019re working on open-source projects, use codeberg. codeberg is a nonprofit organization dedicated to open source, so their storage policies are quite strict. gitLab offers 10gb of storage with no restrictions, and their data policies are much better than gitgub\u2019s if you want full control and to deploy on your own, consider forgejo for", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted GitHub Actions-like forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789425216, "item_id": 49339076, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339076", "by": "dumidusw", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's great for lightweight self hosting", "excerpt": "It's great for lightweight self hosting", "context": "", "use_case": "lightweight self hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789392784, "item_id": 49337049, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49337049", "by": "TabTwo", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD.", "excerpt": "forgejo for hosting, woodpecker for CI/CD. Hopefully forgejo gets federation in the near future because \u00f6ets face it, opening an issue on Github is easy because you have an user there but you wont get one on my private forgejo instance. Also, a tool like gh for forgejo would be nice. If you want to have an easy way to setup, have a look at https://yunohost.org/ that also offers lots of other nice stuff in its \"app st", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789374816, "item_id": 49335926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335926", "by": "sandcat_", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over", "excerpt": "I recently set this up on my homelab, not really expecting to switch to it, more out of interest. But wow, after I saw how unbelievably fast it was, I\u2019ve moved everything over. I\u2019ve now set it up to mirror things automatically to Github if I want to make them public. Using Github at work is painful in comparison. (Also literally just this morning we\u2019ve had to delay a release due to Github being down.)", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab git hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789357921, "item_id": 49334870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334870", "by": "Bnjoroge", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo has the closest compatibility with Github Actions though so it's a good off-Github option", "excerpt": "Hopefully a good spot to plug my own project, preloop, which is a drop-in replacement of Github actions(both the runners and control plane) that runs locally or self-hosted in isoalted microvms, and supports debug-on-failure. You can also push to the server, run CI and then optionally create a draft PR. Not quite production-ready yet(for the self-hosted part), but the local part works well. We implement the official ", "context": "", "use_case": "off-GitHub CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789339264, "item_id": 49333704, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333704", "by": "r0b05", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo/Gitea is lightweight and easy to setup.", "excerpt": "Forgejo/Gitea is lightweight and easy to setup.", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789317696, "item_id": 49332356, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332356", "by": "ryuuseijin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Forgejo is great to self host.", "excerpt": "Forgejo is great to self host. I have an easy to use template for setting it up on fly.io with backups here: https://forgejo-fly.fly.dev/forgejo-admin/forgejo-fly", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789314848, "item_id": 49332178, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332178", "by": "woodrowbarlow", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "forgejo is more compatible than gitea", "excerpt": "no; gitea and foregjo both support actions-style CI/CD and both serve mostly GH-compatible APIs and have GH-style apps. it's not 100% compatible (forgejo is more compatible than gitea), but many of your workflows might \"just work\" without even renaming the .github folder.", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub Actions-compatible CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789313472, "item_id": 49332092, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332092", "by": "slackfan", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "excerpt": "We're moving over to self-hosted forgejo. Interface is roughly similar, featureset is roughly similar enough.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 787263184, "item_id": 49203949, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203949", "by": "adamddev1", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "excerpt": "I moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, with a self-hosted runner on another cheap Hetzner server. It's amazing how clean, snappy, and reliable it is.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "GitHub Actions", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 787249008, "item_id": 49203063, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203063", "by": "monkaiju", "date": "2026-08-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now.", "excerpt": "Im shocked this is still going on... We moved our repos at work to a self-hosted Forgejo 2 months ago because the regular outages were getting ridiculous, looks like a pretty good call now. Honestly I dont think I've seen a tool I used regularly with such a moat lose it simply because they cant keep the service up. Also its hard to not see a pretty strong correlation between a bunch of these big companies doubling do", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git repos at work", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "GitHub Actions Is Down"}, {"id": 785686673, "item_id": 49105417, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105417", "by": "weitendorf", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I realized this was really only for hobbyists", "excerpt": "There are two that I know of, and neither seem to do a better job at solving my problem of providing a place to host and distribute open source software. I hosted my own forgejo server used by actual other people * very slightly* before it was cool, and just to get started I had to go through this giant list of configs governing important auth/cred stuff and also random ass features and everything else, then I set up", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub is the wrong shape for this new world"}]}