{"slug": "gitlab", "name": "GitLab", "category": "git", "category_name": "Git and code hosting", "description": "DevOps platform for Git repository hosting, CI/CD, and project management, cloud or self-hosted.", "recommenders": 36, "commenters": 75, "warners": 18, "score": 22.806, "rising": 19.75, "first": "2025-11-13", "latest": "2026-10-29", "why": "Loved for its CI/CD pipelines and for reliable, low-maintenance self-hosting that keeps teams in control.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 37, "neutral": 20, "compare": 2, "warn": 19}, "spark": [1, 1, 6, 1, 0, 2, 2, 0, 0, 21, 0, 3], "listed": true, "loved": ["Self-hosting", "CI/CD"], "caveat": "Slow, cluttered UI", "short_quote": "I migrated my entire workflow onto a personal GitLab instance", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab", "official_url": "https://about.gitlab.com", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["GitLab"], "verdict": [{"text": "Loved for its CI/CD pipelines", "cites": [{"id": 789735968, "item_id": 49358498, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358498", "by": "rcxdude", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IMO Gitlab's CI has been their killer feature for a while.", "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 and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"}, {"id": 789310272, "item_id": 49331892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331892", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab CI is awesome.", "excerpt": "Yes! And for those complaining that gitlab CE selfhosted is resource hungry: It can be tuned to only use 2 GB memory in total and run perfectly fine for a single developer or limited concurrency. Gitlab CI is awesome.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 791257104, "item_id": 49453569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453569", "by": "hosh", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "excerpt": "If people are happy with Actions API, that sounds great. I\u2019m not happy with the Actions API. I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 789309568, "item_id": 49331848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331848", "by": "epiccoleman", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like their CI setup better than GitHub", "excerpt": "I've been a Gitlab fan for a long time[0]. I typically default to GitHub for my repo slop[1], but if I'm doing something serious I put it in Gitlab. I like their CI setup better than GitHub and there's also self-host options if any of those \"serious\" projects ever needs that. Also back in the day, you needed a paid account to make private repos on GitHub, but Gitlab made them free. Anyway I haven't heard anyone compl", "context": "", "use_case": "serious projects and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " and for reliable, low-maintenance self-hosting that keeps teams in control.", "cites": [{"id": 789361168, "item_id": 49335073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335073", "by": "zer0x4d", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime", "excerpt": "Thank you for building this, looks like it could be really helpful. We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime and a few runners but the configuration and update process has been a bit cumbersome. Will take a look at rocket runner.", "context": "self-hosts GitLab with runners", "use_case": "self-hosted code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789346128, "item_id": 49334133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334133", "by": "cortesoft", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control", "excerpt": "> That said, I wish we hadn't migrated to GH, our self-hosted instance had WAY less downtime despite being perhaps a bit slower (mgmt saving money) and required a bit more toil The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control of when things happened. We didn't do upgrades during times where we really needed our git infra up, and we were in control of our response time to ", "context": "company self-hosted GitLab for years", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789364592, "item_id": 49335287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335287", "by": "znpy", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Frankly a very pleasant experience.", "excerpt": "We did tun our own installation at work, supporting ~120 developers. A single vm, 8 cpu cores and 64gb memory, using ssd disks on a local vmware cluster. It worked okay but: 1. Was only exposed to the corporate network and some vpn connections 2. We did the upgrades late at night once every like six months, taking a snapshot of the whole thing from vmware side before touching anything It worked pretty well and was re", "context": "administered it at work for ~120 developers", "use_case": "self-hosted git for ~120 developers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789380768, "item_id": 49336298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336298", "by": "plqbfbv", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the downtime of GL, even with auto-upgrading and the issues above, was perhaps 1.5 work-days across 6+ years", "excerpt": "> I mean OK. But also, if I want a reliable service in my business, I wouldn't typically auto-upgrade docker images nightly to \"*\". Well fair, but we had been using it for 4+y at the time before running into that, and the rails-based migration scripts basically never failed once despite being migrated across 6 majors and countless minors/patches. Being a small company, from that PoV it gave us very little downtime fo", "context": "small company", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is a slow, cluttered interface", "cites": [{"id": 747893873, "item_id": 46743367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743367", "by": "bramhaag", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore", "excerpt": "I switched from GitLab to Forgejo for my private projects after not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore. I still have proper CI, issue tracking, and all other features I care about, but the interface loads instantly and my screen isn't filled with many features I'll never use for my private projects.", "context": "", "use_case": "private projects Git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747900449, "item_id": 46743778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743778", "by": "NorwegianDude", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain.", "excerpt": "I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time. As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version. Forgejo is simpler. It allows ", "context": "self-hosts on a server", "use_case": "self-hosted Git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}, {"id": 747897312, "item_id": 46743582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743582", "by": "javier2", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry", "excerpt": "We switched to gitlab at work about five years ago and this perfectly summarizes my experience. Add to that Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry, so you can just push your package back in the CI pipeline is one of my favourite features as a smaller team. My least favorite feature is actually the sheer number of features. There is actually too many features. And the co", "context": "smaller team", "use_case": "Git hosting, CI and package registry", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}]}, {"text": " and heavy resource demands when self-hosted.", "cites": [{"id": 747898000, "item_id": 46743625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743625", "by": "wycy", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should.", "excerpt": "We use self-hosted GitLab at work. It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should. The main downside is the system resource requirements are absurd considering at any given time there\u2019s only 1-2 people using the GitLab interface.", "context": "self-hosts at work", "use_case": "self-hosted at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747891057, "item_id": 46743191, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743191", "by": "lkramer", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still like Gitlab, we use it at work and it does a good job", "excerpt": "For a long time I self hosted Gitlab, and was always quite happy with it, but I recently moved my VPS and decided to give Forgejo a try, and I have to say it's refreshing. It's really fast and takes a fraction of the resources Gitlab does. I'm sure Gitlab have more features, but frankly, I wasn't using them. I still like Gitlab, we use it at work and it does a good job, but for my own needs I don't see myself switchi", "context": "self-hosts on a VPS", "use_case": "work Git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Self-hosting", "summary": "Self-hosted instances are described as reliable, low-downtime, and under the team's own control.", "quotes": [{"id": 789361168, "item_id": 49335073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335073", "by": "zer0x4d", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime", "excerpt": "Thank you for building this, looks like it could be really helpful. We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime and a few runners but the configuration and update process has been a bit cumbersome. Will take a look at rocket runner.", "context": "self-hosts GitLab with runners", "use_case": "self-hosted code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789346128, "item_id": 49334133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334133", "by": "cortesoft", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control", "excerpt": "> That said, I wish we hadn't migrated to GH, our self-hosted instance had WAY less downtime despite being perhaps a bit slower (mgmt saving money) and required a bit more toil The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control of when things happened. We didn't do upgrades during times where we really needed our git infra up, and we were in control of our response time to ", "context": "company self-hosted GitLab for years", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789364592, "item_id": 49335287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335287", "by": "znpy", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Frankly a very pleasant experience.", "excerpt": "We did tun our own installation at work, supporting ~120 developers. A single vm, 8 cpu cores and 64gb memory, using ssd disks on a local vmware cluster. It worked okay but: 1. Was only exposed to the corporate network and some vpn connections 2. We did the upgrades late at night once every like six months, taking a snapshot of the whole thing from vmware side before touching anything It worked pretty well and was re", "context": "administered it at work for ~120 developers", "use_case": "self-hosted git for ~120 developers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "CI/CD", "summary": "Commenters call its CI design better than GitHub Actions and its killer feature.", "quotes": [{"id": 789735968, "item_id": 49358498, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358498", "by": "rcxdude", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IMO Gitlab's CI has been their killer feature for a while.", "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 and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"}, {"id": 791257104, "item_id": 49453569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453569", "by": "hosh", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "excerpt": "If people are happy with Actions API, that sounds great. I\u2019m not happy with the Actions API. I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 789310272, "item_id": 49331892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331892", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab CI is awesome.", "excerpt": "Yes! And for those complaining that gitlab CE selfhosted is resource hungry: It can be tuned to only use 2 GB memory in total and run perfectly fine for a single developer or limited concurrency. Gitlab CI is awesome.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Runner flexibility", "summary": "Runner registration is called simpler than GitHub's, with configurable cache locations.", "quotes": [{"id": 789347616, "item_id": 49334226, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334226", "by": "cortesoft", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find the gitlab runner registration process a lot simpler than the github process", "excerpt": "I find the gitlab runner registration process a lot simpler than the github process, and a lot more flexible when you are self hosting the gitlab instance. We used kubernetes runners for both, and gitlab was clearly better. The worst part about the github runner setup is that there is no built in support for using your own cache if you are using github.com and want to run your own runners. In order to use your own ca", "context": "uses Kubernetes runners", "use_case": "self-hosted CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}, {"label": "Feature completeness", "summary": "Seen as the closest GitHub alternative, with nested group organization and built-in package registries.", "quotes": [{"id": 789304256, "item_id": 49331516, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331516", "by": "mariocesar", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GitLab is the closest alternative in terms of features", "excerpt": "I answered this in another thread, if you're already running a large GitHub organization, GitLab is the closest alternative in terms of features A big plus is that it also has an open-source Community Edition that you can self-host", "context": "", "use_case": "GitHub replacement for large org", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789409840, "item_id": 49338115, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338115", "by": "KaiserPro", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I joined a company that was using hosted gitlab. I really liked it", "excerpt": "I've used github for ~12 years, and it was fine for single repos, but it sucked _hard_ for any kind of organisation. It also sucked really hard for CI. I joined a company that was using hosted gitlab. I really liked it, apart from it had the same uptime as github has now. Features wise its about the same as github now, apart from organising repos is far simpler. Its not a flat list in an org, you can have sub teams i", "context": "used GitHub for ~12 years", "use_case": "organisation repos and CI", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 747897312, "item_id": 46743582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743582", "by": "javier2", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry", "excerpt": "We switched to gitlab at work about five years ago and this perfectly summarizes my experience. Add to that Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry, so you can just push your package back in the CI pipeline is one of my favourite features as a smaller team. My least favorite feature is actually the sheer number of features. There is actually too many features. And the co", "context": "smaller team", "use_case": "Git hosting, CI and package registry", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}]}, {"label": "Smooth upgrades", "summary": "Users report years of auto-updates and migrations with almost no failures.", "quotes": [{"id": 789380768, "item_id": 49336298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336298", "by": "plqbfbv", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the downtime of GL, even with auto-upgrading and the issues above, was perhaps 1.5 work-days across 6+ years", "excerpt": "> I mean OK. But also, if I want a reliable service in my business, I wouldn't typically auto-upgrade docker images nightly to \"*\". Well fair, but we had been using it for 4+y at the time before running into that, and the rails-based migration scripts basically never failed once despite being migrated across 6 majors and countless minors/patches. Being a small company, from that PoV it gave us very little downtime fo", "context": "small company", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789462560, "item_id": 49341410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341410", "by": "Nemo_bis", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Clearly the quality of GitLab releases is much higher than I imagined.", "excerpt": "4 years of running production GitLab on nightly is very impressive! I would never have imagined you could last that long. Clearly the quality of GitLab releases is much higher than I imagined.", "context": "", "use_case": "production git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 747900449, "item_id": 46743778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743778", "by": "NorwegianDude", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain.", "excerpt": "I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time. As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version. Forgejo is simpler. It allows ", "context": "self-hosts on a server", "use_case": "self-hosted Git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}]}, {"label": "Generous free tier", "summary": "Free private repos, 10GB storage, and many useful features at no cost are noted.", "quotes": [{"id": 747934832, "item_id": 46745927, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745927", "by": "l7l", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "CICD is really good and lots of useful features are free.", "excerpt": "Never understood why I get the weird looks if I tell people that I use GitLab. Like CICD is really good and lots of useful features are free.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 789446848, "item_id": 49340428, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340428", "by": "sangtd", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "gitLab offers 10gb of storage with no restrictions, and their data policies are much better than gitgub\u2019s", "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": "personal projects hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789309568, "item_id": 49331848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331848", "by": "epiccoleman", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like their CI setup better than GitHub", "excerpt": "I've been a Gitlab fan for a long time[0]. I typically default to GitHub for my repo slop[1], but if I'm doing something serious I put it in Gitlab. I like their CI setup better than GitHub and there's also self-host options if any of those \"serious\" projects ever needs that. Also back in the day, you needed a paid account to make private repos on GitHub, but Gitlab made them free. Anyway I haven't heard anyone compl", "context": "", "use_case": "serious projects and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Slow, cluttered UI", "summary": "Many find the interface sluggish and crowded with features they never use.", "quotes": [{"id": 747893873, "item_id": 46743367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743367", "by": "bramhaag", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore", "excerpt": "I switched from GitLab to Forgejo for my private projects after not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore. I still have proper CI, issue tracking, and all other features I care about, but the interface loads instantly and my screen isn't filled with many features I'll never use for my private projects.", "context": "", "use_case": "private projects Git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747900449, "item_id": 46743778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743778", "by": "NorwegianDude", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain.", "excerpt": "I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time. As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version. Forgejo is simpler. It allows ", "context": "self-hosts on a server", "use_case": "self-hosted Git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}]}, {"label": "Resource hungry", "summary": "Self-hosting is described as resource-heavy with many moving parts.", "quotes": [{"id": 747898000, "item_id": 46743625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743625", "by": "wycy", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should.", "excerpt": "We use self-hosted GitLab at work. It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should. The main downside is the system resource requirements are absurd considering at any given time there\u2019s only 1-2 people using the GitLab interface.", "context": "self-hosts at work", "use_case": "self-hosted at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}, {"id": 769619651, "item_id": 48101228, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48101228", "by": "7e", "date": "2026-05-11", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Completely empty of content, there were multi-second delays everywhere.", "excerpt": "I tried a self-hosted GitLab on a 64 core beast of a machine with Optane drives. Completely empty of content, there were multi-second delays everywhere. Horrified at what must lurk beneath the fa\u00e7ade, I switched to Forgejo, Crow CI and YouTrack and couldn\u2019t be happier.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitLab Announces Workforce Reduction and End of Their CREDIT Values"}]}, {"label": "CI pitfalls", "summary": "Some hit CI footguns, outdated runner defaults, or high backend memory use with large pipelines.", "quotes": [{"id": 791303152, "item_id": 49456447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456447", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "small teams would run into so many footguns with CI that we had to throw up guardrails to prevent mistakes.", "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": "CI at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 737736002, "item_id": 46108500, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108500", "by": "paulddraper", "date": "2025-12-01", "stance": "warn", "quote": "when I used GitLab, it used ancient docker-machine and outdated AMIs by default.", "excerpt": "This is documented currently (supposed to be 14 days). [1] That said, I have found runners to be unnecessarily difficult. But Jenkins and its own quirks, and when I used GitLab, it used ancient docker-machine and outdated AMIs by default. I think Buildkite has been the only one to make this easy and scalable. But it is meant for self hosted runners. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/actions/how-t", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Advent of Sysadmin 2025"}, {"id": 743043760, "item_id": 46440235, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46440235", "by": "doublet00th", "date": "2025-12-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "it took something like 32 gigs of ram on their MergeRequestProcessor SideKiq worker", "excerpt": "We had python scripts that generated GitLab CI/CD yaml [1]. Tooting my own horn here, but it was super cool to ship fairly fast for the first year or so. By the end, we had something like 5 MB of yaml, but in order for the GitLab SaaS backend to process it, it took something like 32 gigs of ram on their MergeRequestProcessor SideKiq worker. They had to open a whole epic in order to reduce the memory usage, but I thin", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD for monorepo", "switched_from": "", "story": "Everything as Code: How We Manage Our Company in One Monorepo"}]}, {"label": "Stale issues", "summary": "Reported issues can sit unresolved for many years.", "quotes": [{"id": 789385344, "item_id": 49336584, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336584", "by": "Lorin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "used to submit issues to Gitlab just to see them stagnate for 6-8 years", "excerpt": "As someone who used to submit issues to Gitlab just to see them stagnate for 6-8 years and then ceremonially get closed after being stuck in management/release bump hell (along with many 'me toos' from both Gitlab premium support staff / 3rd party contributors) I agree with your statement 100%.", "context": "", "use_case": "issue tracking and support", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 791303152, "item_id": 49456447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456447", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "small teams would run into so many footguns with CI that we had to throw up guardrails to prevent mistakes.", "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": "CI at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}]}, {"label": "Pricing changes", "summary": "A sudden price increase pushed at least one user away, and some useful features are absent from the free version.", "quotes": [{"id": 789432497, "item_id": 49339531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339531", "by": "jrey2112", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the sudden GitLab price-hike and flavor feature changes", "excerpt": "Never forget the sudden GitLab price-hike and flavor feature changes just a few years ago. I was literally about to go from free to paid, when the pricing doubled nearly overnight. I left for Gitea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35144974", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 747900449, "item_id": 46743778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743778", "by": "NorwegianDude", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain.", "excerpt": "I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time. As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version. Forgejo is simpler. It allows ", "context": "self-hosts on a server", "use_case": "self-hosted Git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}]}, {"label": "Product direction", "summary": "A former employee criticizes its push into AI, and one user dislikes frequent UI changes.", "quotes": [{"id": 791543553, "item_id": 49471472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471472", "by": "robotmay", "date": "2026-08-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to work for GitLab, for what it's worth (and they've gone quite far down the AI toilet)", "excerpt": "Sigh, frustrating for me but I guess I understand the rationale, if not the implementation. I'm retired from programming professionally and I liked using Sourcehut for my personal projects because it just got out of my way, and I could put my mostly-old open source projects up there without worrying about people trying to contribute to them thanks to the friction of the system. I do slop-code hobby projects because I", "context": "former GitLab employee", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Changes to Sourcehut's terms of service regarding LLMs"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}]}], "who": [{"by": "skullone", "context": "previously ran self-hosted GitLab at last job", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293105", "date": "2026-10-29"}, {"by": "apt-get", "context": "DevOps/SRE freelancer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990823", "date": "2026-10-07"}, {"by": "anvuong", "context": "dev on a 30-person team in a large corp", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453433", "date": "2026-08-26"}, {"by": "plqbfbv", "context": "ran production GitLab with scripted docker updates", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344279", "date": "2026-08-18"}, {"by": "KaiserPro", "context": "used GitHub for ~12 years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338115", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "znpy", "context": "administered it at work for ~120 developers", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335287", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "zer0x4d", "context": "self-hosts GitLab with runners", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335073", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "cortesoft", "context": "uses Kubernetes runners", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334226", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "ktm5j", "context": "org self-hosts it", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331645", "date": "2026-08-17"}, {"by": "trollbridge", "context": "self-hosts GitLab and pays for it", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028462", "date": "2026-07-23"}, {"by": "xyzzy123", "context": "homelab operator", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552532", "date": "2026-06-16"}, {"by": "anarticle", "context": "runs a home cluster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976575", "date": "2026-02-11"}], "tags": ["self-hostable", "for teams", "for CI-heavy projects", "for leaving GitHub", "for personal projects"], "use_cases": ["git hosting", "self-hosted git forge", "code hosting", "ci/cd", "self-hosted code hosting", "self-hosted git and ci"], "compared": [{"slug": "github", "name": "GitHub", "co": 44, "switched_from": 5, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "forgejo", "name": "Forgejo", "co": 24, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 7}, {"slug": "gitea", "name": "Gitea", "co": 19, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "codeberg", "name": "Codeberg", "co": 8, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "github-actions", "name": "GitHub Actions", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "sourcehut", "name": "SourceHut", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "bitbucket", "name": "Bitbucket", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "git", "name": "Git", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 804651072, "item_id": 50290692, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50290692", "by": "john_cogs", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GitLab team member here.", "excerpt": "GitLab team member here. We're aware of the issue and a fix is being prepared: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/265741", "context": "GitLab team member", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitLab's new 60 req/HR rate limit has a fatal flaw: It blocks the login page"}, {"id": 789370048, "item_id": 49335628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335628", "by": "scientifik", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GitLab as a product is pretty good", "excerpt": "ex-GitLabber here, and yes this is a pretty common scenario. GitLab as a product is pretty good, however GitLab Inc, is not great at supporting the broader community especially the SMB-Mid tier self-hosted users. (If you're big enterprise you'll get white glove support) It's a bummer because they had so much potential to dethrone GitHub a few years ago but really missed the opportunity to position themselves as a via", "context": "ex-GitLabber", "use_case": "personal projects hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331033", "title": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub", "mentions": 31}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742432", "title": "I Like GitLab", "mentions": 7}, {"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=50222622", "title": "Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330684", "title": "Incident with Github.com", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330632", "title": "GitHub down again? no PR access", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {"warn": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 6, "warn": 2}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"warn": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 2}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 6, "warn": 8, "recommend": 21, "compare": 2}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 8, "recommend": 3}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804689680, "item_id": 50293105, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293105", "by": "skullone", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Gitlab", "excerpt": "Nice! I'm stuck on GitHub at current job, but I do miss our self hosted Gitlab at last job. Also, we could copy the VM around, patch or rollback, with a saved image of \"everything that ran the business\" and launch it again elsewhere. Like, it fit our DR scenarios, daily custom workflows etc so much better than Githib. I love Gitlab", "context": "previously ran self-hosted GitLab at last job", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab"}, {"id": 804638608, "item_id": 50289913, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289913", "by": "ndsipa_pomu", "date": "2026-10-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "If they switched to using the official Gitlab containers, then it's just a case of upgrading to a new version number", "excerpt": "If they switched to using the official Gitlab containers, then it's just a case of upgrading to a new version number when Gitlab sends a security email (about once a fortnight or so).", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitLab Security Incident: Attempted Exploitation of CVE-2026-97229"}, {"id": 803579776, "item_id": 50223736, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50223736", "by": "kannanvijayan", "date": "2026-10-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I moved my projects over to GitLab about a year ago.", "excerpt": "I moved my projects over to GitLab about a year ago. GitLab's model is different - at least it was when I moved over to it. They charged for public repositories and gave you a free private ones as a sampler for trying out the platform. That approach is far less prone to getting overrun by millions of slopositories. GitLab never tried to be the social media of software development. Theirs is a much simpler, classical ", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Roku developer repositories moved from GitHub to GitLab"}, {"id": 802997600, "item_id": 50187350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187350", "by": "bon0r", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "after updating a pop-up still shows:", "excerpt": "possible bug? or too soon to check? :) after updating a pop-up still shows: \"You are currently on version 19.5.1! We strongly recommend upgrading your GitLab installation immediately.\" while 19.5.1 should be the latest and fixed version", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitLab critical patch release"}, {"id": 802963280, "item_id": 50185205, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50185205", "by": "moritzwarhier", "date": "2026-10-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love GitLab", "excerpt": "Git doesn't have a concept of \"fork\". GitHub uses this metaphor, and, as another commenter already aptly described, it could be nothing more than a fancy name for namespaced branches, on the server side. On the client side, \"forks\" are usually different repository clones with different remotes and a \"coincidentally\" shared history. But you can also map forked repos to multiple remotes of the same repository for examp", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "PHP 8.2.35"}, {"id": 802595216, "item_id": 50162201, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50162201", "by": "stevenhuang", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We use gitlab and there's probably some way to hook up a custom external review tool", "excerpt": "> just to clear space for the things you need to comprehend. That's really it. I've been finding the same limitations with the default PR code review tools. We currently make do by having a section in our PRs \"recommended review order\" with a list of files/dirs that should be looked at first, which not only is much smaller Loc than everything else but is the main relevance of the PR. Within a given project there are ", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting and PR review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How to deal with shipping AI-written code you don't understand?"}, {"id": 801514963, "item_id": 50094685, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094685", "by": "hangrybear666", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We run our own gitlab instance in a central AWS account", "excerpt": "Oh that's neat. Yeah I got started on heroku too. Fly.io also comes to mind. We run our own gitlab instance in a central AWS account that has some infra buckets containing modularized Terraform packaged into tarballs that are then fanned out to a couple hundred aws accounts across the teams and environments (prod, qual, dev). Its all deployed via gitlab ci cd pipelines (which are just ec2 instances spawned at pipelin", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Neckbeard \u2013 A DevOps/platform/SRE plugin for your agent"}, {"id": 800266977, "item_id": 50016686, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016686", "by": "dada216", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "At home: truenas and gitlab.", "excerpt": "Hosted in a cloud: a VPN Lowendtalk Is an amazing community to get offers for those. At home: truenas and gitlab. At home, for work: I have an older HP workstation with an older Xeon with 24 physical cores and it runs a rhel (I have them for free as a partner) and I use it to run VMs for experiments and replicating infras, K8S, Windows AD stuff, etc.", "context": "", "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": 799853168, "item_id": 49990823, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990823", "by": "apt-get", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "CI/CD (mostly Gitlab)", "excerpt": "Location: Paris, France Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: No Technologies: End-to-end Devops/SRE -- general POSIX sysadmin stuff, modern systemd slash linux, Docker/Podman/Virtualization/etc, CI/CD (mostly Gitlab), managing different kinds of private software forges & repositories, DB clusters (Postgresql & co.), observability (Grafana stack), everything k8s. Software Engineering -- Python, Web Stack (I enjoy both Vue", "context": "DevOps/SRE freelancer", "use_case": "CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 799665858, "item_id": 49979116, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49979116", "by": "kgeist", "date": "2026-10-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "So we had to migrate to GitLab.", "excerpt": "Their management decisions are strange, right. They had a nice tool called Upsource, we used it for code reviews. Then they sunset it and told us to use JetBrains Space instead. After we migrated to JetBrains Space, they said, oh wait, we sunset it too. So we had to migrate to GitLab. And now, with AI-assisted coding, I don't even need their IDE anymore, because I mostly look at diffs. And that kinda brings us back t", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting and review", "switched_from": "JetBrains Space", "story": "JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025"}, {"id": 798680704, "item_id": 49917544, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49917544", "by": "sublinear", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use GitLab at work", "excerpt": "That's an interesting perspective. I feel like this is one of those topics where compromise is futile. I use GitLab at work and use plain git on personal projects. I don't like spending time on tools that aren't either teaching me or paying me.", "context": "", "use_case": "work source hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gitea 28.0"}, {"id": 791543553, "item_id": 49471472, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49471472", "by": "robotmay", "date": "2026-08-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to work for GitLab, for what it's worth (and they've gone quite far down the AI toilet)", "excerpt": "Sigh, frustrating for me but I guess I understand the rationale, if not the implementation. I'm retired from programming professionally and I liked using Sourcehut for my personal projects because it just got out of my way, and I could put my mostly-old open source projects up there without worrying about people trying to contribute to them thanks to the friction of the system. I do slop-code hobby projects because I", "context": "former GitLab employee", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Changes to Sourcehut's terms of service regarding LLMs"}, {"id": 791303152, "item_id": 49456447, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49456447", "by": "vinnymac", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "warn", "quote": "small teams would run into so many footguns with CI that we had to throw up guardrails to prevent mistakes.", "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": "CI at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 791257104, "item_id": 49453569, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453569", "by": "hosh", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "excerpt": "If people are happy with Actions API, that sounds great. I\u2019m not happy with the Actions API. I think Gitlab\u2019s cicd design is much better, and I\u2019m not fighting it all the time when I use it.", "context": "", "use_case": "CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 791254928, "item_id": 49453433, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453433", "by": "anvuong", "date": "2026-08-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We used to run our own gitlab on-prem, our CI/CD was also on-prem. It worked perfectly, never had down time", "excerpt": "I used to work in a small independent team of 30 people within a large corp, half of which was dev. We used to run our own gitlab on-prem, our CI/CD was also on-prem. It worked perfectly, never had down time, devops guy could configure them on-demand to our needs. Me (and some other guys) also jumped in times to times to help (mostly just ssh into the servers for health check, disk partition, etc.). Then we grew (the", "context": "dev on a 30-person team in a large corp", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI/CD", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disruption with Some GitHub Services \u2013 Resolved"}, {"id": 789735968, "item_id": 49358498, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358498", "by": "rcxdude", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "IMO Gitlab's CI has been their killer feature for a while.", "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 and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"}, {"id": 789529552, "item_id": 49345597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345597", "by": "libertas_quae_s", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We have self-hosted GitLab running for https://omniline.app/", "excerpt": "We have self-hosted GitLab running for https://omniline.app/", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789508464, "item_id": 49344279, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344279", "by": "plqbfbv", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it was a really good run", "excerpt": "> on nightly Just to make it clear: it wasn't pinned to `latest`, we created a small script that would probe the docker registry and enumerate all the tagged images (e.g. 15.3.2, 16.4.1, ...), sort, pick the latest of those tagged, and apply it. It was probably 1-3 updates per week. Still, it was a really good run despite the couple hiccups mentioned above.", "context": "ran production GitLab with scripted docker updates", "use_case": "self-hosted production git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789462560, "item_id": 49341410, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49341410", "by": "Nemo_bis", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Clearly the quality of GitLab releases is much higher than I imagined.", "excerpt": "4 years of running production GitLab on nightly is very impressive! I would never have imagined you could last that long. Clearly the quality of GitLab releases is much higher than I imagined.", "context": "", "use_case": "production git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789446848, "item_id": 49340428, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49340428", "by": "sangtd", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "gitLab offers 10gb of storage with no restrictions, and their data policies are much better than gitgub\u2019s", "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": "personal projects hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789432497, "item_id": 49339531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339531", "by": "jrey2112", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "the sudden GitLab price-hike and flavor feature changes", "excerpt": "Never forget the sudden GitLab price-hike and flavor feature changes just a few years ago. I was literally about to go from free to paid, when the pricing doubled nearly overnight. I left for Gitea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35144974", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789422577, "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"}, {"id": 789409840, "item_id": 49338115, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338115", "by": "KaiserPro", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I joined a company that was using hosted gitlab. I really liked it", "excerpt": "I've used github for ~12 years, and it was fine for single repos, but it sucked _hard_ for any kind of organisation. It also sucked really hard for CI. I joined a company that was using hosted gitlab. I really liked it, apart from it had the same uptime as github has now. Features wise its about the same as github now, apart from organising repos is far simpler. Its not a flat list in an org, you can have sub teams i", "context": "used GitHub for ~12 years", "use_case": "organisation repos and CI", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789409360, "item_id": 49338085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338085", "by": "esseph", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "compare", "quote": "you will be just fine in GitLab, CircleCI, Jenkins", "excerpt": "Pipelines are not magic. You want a couple of primitives in there, variable substitution, maybe lite secret management. Depending on the type and languages you work across they could also be 100% unique to each company, language, project, and industry. LLMs have also further made pipeline creation pretty trivial. If you can use or make a GitHub action you will be just fine in GitLab, CircleCI, Jenkins, or a couple of", "context": "", "use_case": "CI pipelines", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789385728, "item_id": 49336608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336608", "by": "fHr", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "gitlab.com and selfhosted gitlab in various companies in the last few years", "excerpt": "gitlab.com and selfhosted gitlab in various companies in the last few years", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789385344, "item_id": 49336584, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336584", "by": "Lorin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "used to submit issues to Gitlab just to see them stagnate for 6-8 years", "excerpt": "As someone who used to submit issues to Gitlab just to see them stagnate for 6-8 years and then ceremonially get closed after being stuck in management/release bump hell (along with many 'me toos' from both Gitlab premium support staff / 3rd party contributors) I agree with your statement 100%.", "context": "", "use_case": "issue tracking and support", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789380768, "item_id": 49336298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336298", "by": "plqbfbv", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the downtime of GL, even with auto-upgrading and the issues above, was perhaps 1.5 work-days across 6+ years", "excerpt": "> I mean OK. But also, if I want a reliable service in my business, I wouldn't typically auto-upgrade docker images nightly to \"*\". Well fair, but we had been using it for 4+y at the time before running into that, and the rails-based migration scripts basically never failed once despite being migrated across 6 majors and countless minors/patches. Being a small company, from that PoV it gave us very little downtime fo", "context": "small company", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789378832, "item_id": 49336177, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336177", "by": "bluerooibos", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm so glad I migrated to GitLab months ago.", "excerpt": "> calm down If people and companies are paying for critical infra they expect it to be available - it's not MY problem that their servers are on fire - last time I checked, having too much demand was a good problem to have and they've had over a year to fix it and come up with a plan. I'm so glad I migrated to GitLab months ago.", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "GitHub", "story": "Incident with Github.com"}, {"id": 789375008, "item_id": 49335938, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335938", "by": "Magicrafter13", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My setup is a self hosted GitLab.", "excerpt": "My setup is a self hosted GitLab. From there, in most of my repos I setup repo mirroring (basically it just does its own SSH-based git push whenever I push commits to it) to GitHub, GitLab, and Codeberg. All of these are free (if you ignore electricity cost of hosting your own git server), and each one is a backup of sorts. I don't necessarily recommend starting with GitLab though unless you want advanced CI capabili", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git with mirroring", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789364592, "item_id": 49335287, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335287", "by": "znpy", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Frankly a very pleasant experience.", "excerpt": "We did tun our own installation at work, supporting ~120 developers. A single vm, 8 cpu cores and 64gb memory, using ssd disks on a local vmware cluster. It worked okay but: 1. Was only exposed to the corporate network and some vpn connections 2. We did the upgrades late at night once every like six months, taking a snapshot of the whole thing from vmware side before touching anything It worked pretty well and was re", "context": "administered it at work for ~120 developers", "use_case": "self-hosted git for ~120 developers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789361636, "item_id": 49335102, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335102", "by": "KronisLV", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also self-hosted GitLab for some years", "excerpt": "I also self-hosted GitLab for some years, eventually ended up moving over to Gitea + WoodpeckerCI + Nexus (with Nexus for a while). Well there was DroneCI in the middle for a bit there as well, but Woodpecker is perfectly okay and more free in regards to what you can do. Only thing is that not that much other software out there supports Gitea, for example Kepler only knows about GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Trello and Linea", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789361168, "item_id": 49335073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335073", "by": "zer0x4d", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime", "excerpt": "Thank you for building this, looks like it could be really helpful. We've been running our self-hosted GitLab with almost 99.99% uptime and a few runners but the configuration and update process has been a bit cumbersome. Will take a look at rocket runner.", "context": "self-hosts GitLab with runners", "use_case": "self-hosted code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789347616, "item_id": 49334226, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334226", "by": "cortesoft", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I find the gitlab runner registration process a lot simpler than the github process", "excerpt": "I find the gitlab runner registration process a lot simpler than the github process, and a lot more flexible when you are self hosting the gitlab instance. We used kubernetes runners for both, and gitlab was clearly better. The worst part about the github runner setup is that there is no built in support for using your own cache if you are using github.com and want to run your own runners. In order to use your own ca", "context": "uses Kubernetes runners", "use_case": "self-hosted CI runners", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789346128, "item_id": 49334133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334133", "by": "cortesoft", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control", "excerpt": "> That said, I wish we hadn't migrated to GH, our self-hosted instance had WAY less downtime despite being perhaps a bit slower (mgmt saving money) and required a bit more toil The key thing that drove our decision to self host gitlab was that WE were the ones in control of when things happened. We didn't do upgrades during times where we really needed our git infra up, and we were in control of our response time to ", "context": "company self-hosted GitLab for years", "use_case": "self-hosted git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789344641, "item_id": 49334040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334040", "by": "sarah-robiin", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "which always felt quite bloated", "excerpt": "Works well and is pretty straightforward. Just set up a CI pipeline for PHP projects with a forgejo runner last week. Tried many approaches, ended up with a simple debian VM. Runner works well with docker images inside the VM, quite a flexible setup. Found this easier and better than my last tries a few years ago with gitlab, which always felt quite bloated. I also published a blog post today about this whole journey", "context": "", "use_case": "CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789343938, "item_id": 49333996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333996", "by": "rhdunn", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GitLab, CodeBerg, and others are available.", "excerpt": "It depends on what you are after? 1. Do you want something that works and feels like GitHub? -- Forejo and Gitea are good for this. 2. Do you want a place to host git repositories with minimal hassle? -- GitLab, CodeBerg, and others are available. 3. Do you have your own hosting infrastructure? You could use gitolite and CGit/GitWeb on that hosting platform or local hardware. 4. Do you just want to host repositories?", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting with minimal hassle", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789329874, "item_id": 49333117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49333117", "by": "sebmellen", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I know GitLab does, but I'm not massively impressed with GitLab either.", "excerpt": "How about ticketing? We use Linear and their integration with GitHub is pretty buttery. Willing to give it up for better service stability, but wondering if Forgejo offers any kind of native ticketing integrations. I know GitLab does, but I'm not massively impressed with GitLab either.", "context": "", "use_case": "code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "GitHub down again? no PR access"}, {"id": 789324481, "item_id": 49332780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332780", "by": "wongarsu", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I would consider gitlab for source control", "excerpt": "I'd also say that gitlab runners are the biggest failure point in gitlab and take some work to micro-manage. If I was setting up from scratch I would consider gitlab for source control, but some hosted service for CI", "context": "", "use_case": "source control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789311505, "item_id": 49331969, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331969", "by": "ukd1", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I've used gitlab and gitea", "excerpt": "I've used gitlab and gitea; gitea is faster, and easier to manage and does everything I actually need though, is less feature complete.", "context": "", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789310752, "item_id": 49331922, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331922", "by": "rvz", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "today it makes even more sense to self host with GitLab, Gitea or Forgejo.", "excerpt": "It is time to switch to self-hostable alternatives. It made sense 6 years ago as I said before [0], today it makes even more sense to self host with GitLab, Gitea or Forgejo. ...Or we can repeat the same issues again with Cursor Origin [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22868406 [1] https://cursor.com/origin", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted code hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789310272, "item_id": 49331892, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331892", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab CI is awesome.", "excerpt": "Yes! And for those complaining that gitlab CE selfhosted is resource hungry: It can be tuned to only use 2 GB memory in total and run perfectly fine for a single developer or limited concurrency. Gitlab CI is awesome.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted git and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 789309568, "item_id": 49331848, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331848", "by": "epiccoleman", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like their CI setup better than GitHub", "excerpt": "I've been a Gitlab fan for a long time[0]. I typically default to GitHub for my repo slop[1], but if I'm doing something serious I put it in Gitlab. I like their CI setup better than GitHub and there's also self-host options if any of those \"serious\" projects ever needs that. Also back in the day, you needed a paid account to make private repos on GitHub, but Gitlab made them free. Anyway I haven't heard anyone compl", "context": "", "use_case": "serious projects and CI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 774677152, "item_id": 48417322, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417322", "by": "selfhoster1312", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "gitlab was always very hard to selfhost with many moving parts, many requirements, and using much resources.", "excerpt": "Gitlab's UI changes every now and then, for seemingly no reason. The UI is very full of stuff (hard to find your way around), and very slow. Notably in the past months, they've changed the issues/tickets board into a \"work items\" board which feels infinitely slower to load, has such a vague meaning that nobody can find it (especially when translated), and brings exactly 0 use to anyone i know. They just seem to be do", "context": "self-hosts git", "use_case": "git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mantine-datatable (and others) compromised \u2013 owner account suspended"}, {"id": 747900449, "item_id": 46743778, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743778", "by": "NorwegianDude", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain.", "excerpt": "I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time. As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version. Forgejo is simpler. It allows ", "context": "self-hosts on a server", "use_case": "self-hosted Git forge", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747898000, "item_id": 46743625, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743625", "by": "wycy", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should.", "excerpt": "We use self-hosted GitLab at work. It\u2019s really a pleasure to use, everything works the way it feels like it should. The main downside is the system resource requirements are absurd considering at any given time there\u2019s only 1-2 people using the GitLab interface.", "context": "self-hosts at work", "use_case": "self-hosted at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747897312, "item_id": 46743582, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743582", "by": "javier2", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry", "excerpt": "We switched to gitlab at work about five years ago and this perfectly summarizes my experience. Add to that Gitlab projects also have a included Maven, NPM and python compatible package registry, so you can just push your package back in the CI pipeline is one of my favourite features as a smaller team. My least favorite feature is actually the sheer number of features. There is actually too many features. And the co", "context": "smaller team", "use_case": "Git hosting, CI and package registry", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747893873, "item_id": 46743367, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743367", "by": "bramhaag", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore", "excerpt": "I switched from GitLab to Forgejo for my private projects after not wanting to deal with how slow GitLab's interface is anymore. I still have proper CI, issue tracking, and all other features I care about, but the interface loads instantly and my screen isn't filled with many features I'll never use for my private projects.", "context": "", "use_case": "private projects Git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}, {"id": 747891057, "item_id": 46743191, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46743191", "by": "lkramer", "date": "2026-01-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I still like Gitlab, we use it at work and it does a good job", "excerpt": "For a long time I self hosted Gitlab, and was always quite happy with it, but I recently moved my VPS and decided to give Forgejo a try, and I have to say it's refreshing. It's really fast and takes a fraction of the resources Gitlab does. I'm sure Gitlab have more features, but frankly, I wasn't using them. I still like Gitlab, we use it at work and it does a good job, but for my own needs I don't see myself switchi", "context": "self-hosts on a VPS", "use_case": "work Git hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Like GitLab"}]}