{"slug": "gerrit", "name": "Gerrit", "category": "git", "category_name": "Git and code hosting", "description": "Open-source, web-based code review and Git repository hosting tool.", "recommenders": 6, "commenters": 9, "warners": 0, "score": 6.341, "rising": 3.35, "first": "2026-02-09", "latest": "2026-08-26", "why": "Liked for code review, including per-commit review of stacked diffs, especially at large companies where pull requests get unwieldy, and as a self-hosted option for keeping code review in-house.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 2, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Code review", "Self-hosting"], "caveat": "Learning curve", "short_quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.gerritcodereview.com/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Gerrit"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for code review, including per-commit review of stacked diffs,", "cites": [{"id": 789467424, "item_id": 49341714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Use Gerrit if you care about code review.", "excerpt": "Old skool is best skool... There is wisdom in keeping these decoupled: - 1. your central code review (and hosting), which is the critical choke-point on team collaboration. versus - 2. the ever-expanding ick of testing, building, deploying it etc... because failure modes of software construction infra are concentrated here. --- 1. Code review (and hosting): Keep this in-house always. Use Gerrit if you care about code", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "use_case": "in-house code review and hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 785994417, "item_id": 49124651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124651", "by": "Shish2k", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator", "excerpt": "I am confused - I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator, but trying to port that same \"each commit gets reviewed individually, and things don't break when a half-reviewed stack gets rebased\" workflow to GitHub has been a nightmare, how does JJ help?", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked diff review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub"}, {"id": 789489184, "item_id": 49343074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49343074", "by": "mkesper", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation)", "excerpt": "Come on, there were people using Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation) for good reasons even before GitHub became popular.", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " especially at large companies where pull requests get unwieldy,", "cites": [{"id": 791105440, "item_id": 49444090, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444090", "by": "danpalmer", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "excerpt": "This is exactly it. When I worked in a ~10 person team I just didn't get it, PRs worked quite well (with some basic discipline, they're not perfect). When I moved to a... much larger company... I don't know how PRs would work here, it would be way too unwieldy. The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "context": "works at a much larger company, previously ~10 person team", "use_case": "code review at large company", "switched_from": "", "story": "Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others"}, {"id": 752974304, "item_id": 47060894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "by": "lima", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "excerpt": "> But the implementation of Gerrit seems rather unloved There are lots of people who are very fond of Gerrit, and if anything, upstream development has picked up recently. Google has an increasing amount of production code that lives outside of their monorepo, and all of those teams use Gerrit. They have a few internal plugins, but most improvements are released as part of the upstream project. My company has been us", "context": "company has used it for years", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gentoo on Codeberg"}]}, {"text": " and as a self-hosted option for keeping code review in-house.", "cites": [{"id": 789663137, "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 code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"}, {"id": 789467424, "item_id": 49341714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Use Gerrit if you care about code review.", "excerpt": "Old skool is best skool... There is wisdom in keeping these decoupled: - 1. your central code review (and hosting), which is the critical choke-point on team collaboration. versus - 2. the ever-expanding ick of testing, building, deploying it etc... because failure modes of software construction infra are concentrated here. --- 1. Code review (and hosting): Keep this in-house always. Use Gerrit if you care about code", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "use_case": "in-house code review and hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 784314017, "item_id": 49019626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019626", "by": "cmrdporcupine", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I do have my own self-hosted Gerrit I use for other somewhat more private things.", "excerpt": "I dunno, I just felt for the health of the project and getting contributors it made no sense. GH sucks but it comes with social amplifiers that tend to attract people. e.g. I had everthing over at Codeberg for 11 months but rarely had new \"followers\" over there, but still acquired \"stars\" on the read-only GH mirror of it. I was already hosting my own CI, I never used Codeberg's because I was trying to be responsible ", "context": "", "use_case": "private code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects"}]}, {"text": " The caveats are a learning curve before the productivity payoff", "cites": [{"id": 752974304, "item_id": 47060894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "by": "lima", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "excerpt": "> But the implementation of Gerrit seems rather unloved There are lots of people who are very fond of Gerrit, and if anything, upstream development has picked up recently. Google has an increasing amount of production code that lives outside of their monorepo, and all of those teams use Gerrit. They have a few internal plugins, but most improvements are released as part of the upstream project. My company has been us", "context": "company has used it for years", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gentoo on Codeberg"}]}, {"text": " and a concern that it may take significant work to administer.", "cites": [{"id": 751163345, "item_id": 46947709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947709", "by": "koreth1", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "excerpt": "The biggest thing tying my team to GitHub right now is that we use Graphite to manage stacked diffs, and as far as I can tell, Graphite doesn't support anything but GitHub. What other tools are people using for stacked-diff workflows (especially code review)? Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked-diff code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Is Down"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Code review", "summary": "Commenters recommend it for teams that care about code review, and one says its review UI beat GitHub's.", "quotes": [{"id": 789467424, "item_id": 49341714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Use Gerrit if you care about code review.", "excerpt": "Old skool is best skool... There is wisdom in keeping these decoupled: - 1. your central code review (and hosting), which is the critical choke-point on team collaboration. versus - 2. the ever-expanding ick of testing, building, deploying it etc... because failure modes of software construction infra are concentrated here. --- 1. Code review (and hosting): Keep this in-house always. Use Gerrit if you care about code", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "use_case": "in-house code review and hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789489184, "item_id": 49343074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49343074", "by": "mkesper", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation)", "excerpt": "Come on, there were people using Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation) for good reasons even before GitHub became popular.", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 785994417, "item_id": 49124651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124651", "by": "Shish2k", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator", "excerpt": "I am confused - I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator, but trying to port that same \"each commit gets reviewed individually, and things don't break when a half-reviewed stack gets rebased\" workflow to GitHub has been a nightmare, how does JJ help?", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked diff review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Self-hosting", "summary": "Commenters name it as a self-hosted choice for enterprises and for private projects.", "quotes": [{"id": 789663137, "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 code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"}, {"id": 784314017, "item_id": 49019626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019626", "by": "cmrdporcupine", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I do have my own self-hosted Gerrit I use for other somewhat more private things.", "excerpt": "I dunno, I just felt for the health of the project and getting contributors it made no sense. GH sucks but it comes with social amplifiers that tend to attract people. e.g. I had everthing over at Codeberg for 11 months but rarely had new \"followers\" over there, but still acquired \"stars\" on the read-only GH mirror of it. I was already hosting my own CI, I never used Codeberg's because I was trying to be responsible ", "context": "", "use_case": "private code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects"}, {"id": 789467424, "item_id": 49341714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Use Gerrit if you care about code review.", "excerpt": "Old skool is best skool... There is wisdom in keeping these decoupled: - 1. your central code review (and hosting), which is the critical choke-point on team collaboration. versus - 2. the ever-expanding ick of testing, building, deploying it etc... because failure modes of software construction infra are concentrated here. --- 1. Code review (and hosting): Keep this in-house always. Use Gerrit if you care about code", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "use_case": "in-house code review and hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Scales to large orgs", "summary": "Commenters say its workflow suits large companies and has been a sustained productivity win.", "quotes": [{"id": 791105440, "item_id": 49444090, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444090", "by": "danpalmer", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "excerpt": "This is exactly it. When I worked in a ~10 person team I just didn't get it, PRs worked quite well (with some basic discipline, they're not perfect). When I moved to a... much larger company... I don't know how PRs would work here, it would be way too unwieldy. The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "context": "works at a much larger company, previously ~10 person team", "use_case": "code review at large company", "switched_from": "", "story": "Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others"}, {"id": 752974304, "item_id": 47060894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "by": "lima", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "excerpt": "> But the implementation of Gerrit seems rather unloved There are lots of people who are very fond of Gerrit, and if anything, upstream development has picked up recently. Google has an increasing amount of production code that lives outside of their monorepo, and all of those teams use Gerrit. They have a few internal plugins, but most improvements are released as part of the upstream project. My company has been us", "context": "company has used it for years", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gentoo on Codeberg"}]}, {"label": "Stacked diffs", "summary": "One commenter says it handles stacked diffs and per-commit review in a way that is hard to replicate on GitHub.", "quotes": [{"id": 785994417, "item_id": 49124651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124651", "by": "Shish2k", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator", "excerpt": "I am confused - I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator, but trying to port that same \"each commit gets reviewed individually, and things don't break when a half-reviewed stack gets rebased\" workflow to GitHub has been a nightmare, how does JJ help?", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked diff review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Learning curve", "summary": "One long-time user says the productivity gains come only once everyone is past the learning curve.", "quotes": [{"id": 752974304, "item_id": 47060894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "by": "lima", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "excerpt": "> But the implementation of Gerrit seems rather unloved There are lots of people who are very fond of Gerrit, and if anything, upstream development has picked up recently. Google has an increasing amount of production code that lives outside of their monorepo, and all of those teams use Gerrit. They have a few internal plugins, but most improvements are released as part of the upstream project. My company has been us", "context": "company has used it for years", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gentoo on Codeberg"}]}, {"label": "Admin effort", "summary": "One commenter suspects it might require significant work to administer.", "quotes": [{"id": 751163345, "item_id": 46947709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947709", "by": "koreth1", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "excerpt": "The biggest thing tying my team to GitHub right now is that we use Graphite to manage stacked diffs, and as far as I can tell, Graphite doesn't support anything but GitHub. What other tools are people using for stacked-diff workflows (especially code review)? Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked-diff code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Is Down"}]}], "who": [{"by": "danpalmer", "context": "works at a much larger company, previously ~10 person team", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444090", "date": "2026-08-26"}, {"by": "adityaathalye", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "lima", "context": "company has used it for years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "date": "2026-02-18"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for large teams", "for enterprises", "for stacked diffs"], "use_cases": ["code review", "code review at large company", "self-hosted code review", "in-house code review and hosting", "stacked diff review", "private code review"], "compared": [{"slug": "github", "name": "GitHub", "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": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49441666", "title": "Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334209", "title": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49112232", "title": "Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49015588", "title": "Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48461670", "title": "Ask HN: How / What do you use for Code Review?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 4}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 791105440, "item_id": 49444090, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444090", "by": "danpalmer", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "excerpt": "This is exactly it. When I worked in a ~10 person team I just didn't get it, PRs worked quite well (with some basic discipline, they're not perfect). When I moved to a... much larger company... I don't know how PRs would work here, it would be way too unwieldy. The Gerrit style works fantastically here.", "context": "works at a much larger company, previously ~10 person team", "use_case": "code review at large company", "switched_from": "", "story": "Maiao: Gerrit-style code review workflow for GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, others"}, {"id": 789663137, "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 code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"}, {"id": 789489184, "item_id": 49343074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49343074", "by": "mkesper", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation)", "excerpt": "Come on, there were people using Gerrit instances (which had better PR UI than GH implementation) for good reasons even before GitHub became popular.", "context": "", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789467424, "item_id": 49341714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341714", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Use Gerrit if you care about code review.", "excerpt": "Old skool is best skool... There is wisdom in keeping these decoupled: - 1. your central code review (and hosting), which is the critical choke-point on team collaboration. versus - 2. the ever-expanding ick of testing, building, deploying it etc... because failure modes of software construction infra are concentrated here. --- 1. Code review (and hosting): Keep this in-house always. Use Gerrit if you care about code", "context": "prefers keeping everything in-house", "use_case": "in-house code review and hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 785994417, "item_id": 49124651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49124651", "by": "Shish2k", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator", "excerpt": "I am confused - I love JJ and stacked diffs with Gerrit and Phabricator, but trying to port that same \"each commit gets reviewed individually, and things don't break when a half-reviewed stack gets rebased\" workflow to GitHub has been a nightmare, how does JJ help?", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked diff review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Stacked PRs are now live on GitHub"}, {"id": 784314017, "item_id": 49019626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49019626", "by": "cmrdporcupine", "date": "2026-07-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I do have my own self-hosted Gerrit I use for other somewhat more private things.", "excerpt": "I dunno, I just felt for the health of the project and getting contributors it made no sense. GH sucks but it comes with social amplifiers that tend to attract people. e.g. I had everthing over at Codeberg for 11 months but rarely had new \"followers\" over there, but still acquired \"stars\" on the read-only GH mirror of it. I was already hosting my own CI, I never used Codeberg's because I was trying to be responsible ", "context": "", "use_case": "private code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Codeberg Bans Cryptocurrency Projects"}, {"id": 775387168, "item_id": 48461698, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48461698", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-06-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A while back I used Gerrit for reviewing changes to infrastructure automation", "excerpt": "A while back I used Gerrit for reviewing changes to infrastructure automation, not sure if that counts.", "context": "", "use_case": "code review of infrastructure automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How / What do you use for Code Review?"}, {"id": 752974304, "item_id": 47060894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47060894", "by": "lima", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's a big and sustained productivity win once everyone is past the learning curve", "excerpt": "> But the implementation of Gerrit seems rather unloved There are lots of people who are very fond of Gerrit, and if anything, upstream development has picked up recently. Google has an increasing amount of production code that lives outside of their monorepo, and all of those teams use Gerrit. They have a few internal plugins, but most improvements are released as part of the upstream project. My company has been us", "context": "company has used it for years", "use_case": "code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gentoo on Codeberg"}, {"id": 751163345, "item_id": 46947709, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947709", "by": "koreth1", "date": "2026-02-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "excerpt": "The biggest thing tying my team to GitHub right now is that we use Graphite to manage stacked diffs, and as far as I can tell, Graphite doesn't support anything but GitHub. What other tools are people using for stacked-diff workflows (especially code review)? Gerrit is the other option I'm aware of but it seems like it might require significant work to administer.", "context": "", "use_case": "stacked-diff code review", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub Is Down"}]}