Forgejo

[LoudLemur]

Gogs vs Gitea vs Forgejo: Which Self-Hosted Git to Pick in 2026? Dev Effort Breakdown

Tired of GitHub's censorship and bloat? Here's a no-BS comparison of the lightweight Git alternatives. All Go-based, MIT-licensed, one-binary deploys. Gogs is dead; pick Gitea or Forgejo for active dev.

Aspect	Gogs (0.13.0, 2021)	Gitea (1.22+, Jan 2026)	Forgejo (8.0+, Jan 2026)
Status	Dead/abandoned (last commit 2016)	Thriving (commercial/community hybrid)	Active fork of Gitea (community/non-profit)
Dev Effort	Zero. Archived on GitHub. No security patches, vulns piling up. Fork it yourself if needed.	High: 2k+ commits/month, 200+ contributors. Monthly releases, enterprise features. Backed by Gitea Ltd (Taiwan-based, less woke drama). GitHub stars: 40k+.	Medium-High: 500+ commits/month, syncs Gitea upstream. 50+ core devs. Codeberg-hosted, but slower than Gitea on edge features. Stars: 10k+.
Performance	Ultra-light (RPi-friendly)	Excellent, scales to 10k+ repos/users	Matches Gitea, Docker-optimized
Features	Basic Git + issues/hooks	Full: Actions (CI/CD), packages, wiki, LFS, federation, OAuth	Same as Gitea + P2P federation emphasis
Community/Woke	None (based by default)	Neutral-ish; CoC exists but pragmatic	Woke-leaning (CoC, pronouns, censorship vibes via Codeberg)
Security	Unpatched (avoid prod)	Frequent audits/fixes	Inherits Gitea + own patches
Setup/Migration	Simple but manual	Easiest: Docker, ARM64, Gogs importer	Docker-heavy, good Gitea/Gogs tools
Pros	Dead simple, zero deps	Feature-complete, reliable, active	Decentralized governance, FOSS purist
Cons	No modern features/support	Corporate shift irks purists	Fork drama, trails Gitea dev speed

Recommendations:

• Solo/based user: Gitea. Most bang-for-buck, ignore upstream politics.
• FOSS maximalist: Forgejo if you buy the anti-corp narrative (but watch the wokeness).
• Legacy: Gogs only for air-gapped hobby—migrate ASAP.

Dev metrics from GitHub/Codeberg dashboards (as of Jan 2026). Gitea wins on momentum; Forgejo if you hate companies.

[timconsidine]

I packaged Forgejo.
My git repo : https://git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/cloudron-forgejo

not added to CCAI catalogue yet

[girish]

@timconsidine can you throw in a license? I literally just moved to gitea from gogs but maybe I will move to forgejo...

[timconsidine]

@girish oops yes I will put a licence this morning

I find gitea UI a touch dated but it’s a git tool so most interactions via terminal or script, so maybe it doesn’t matter.

But Forgejo seems a touch fresher

[timconsidine]

LICENSE added, in sync with Forgejo

[LoudLemur]

@timconsidine

Well done, Tim! Excellent work.

I used to think being on Gogs was leading edge. I think I shall have to try moving over to Forgejo like girish.

[girish]

I think LICENSE file change was may be not pushed.

I am thinking we should keep the gitea package and forgejo package mostly in sync. The current forgejo package misses openssh server+exposing the port, creating default admin user, oidc integration, email etc. Maybe all these bits can be copied from the gitea package (which in turn copied from gogs package).

[timconsidine]

Strange, let me look into it.

[timconsidine]

push of LICENCE to git was skipped - bizarre - force pushed now

investigating other comments

[timconsidine]

@girish my deployed Forgejo is reporting :

Powered by Forgejo Version: 14.0.1+gitea-1.22.0

I read this as meaning it is already pulling in Gitea features ... or actually it's not pulling the Gitea features you mentioned ?

EDIT :. my AI says features available but I need to improve my package

[girish]

@timconsidine sorry, wasn't clear. What I meant is the package has to be updated to support the various things (which are in the gitea package already):

• https://git.cloudron.io/packages/gitea-app/-/blob/master/CloudronManifest.json?ref_type=heads#L22 . This makes "git clone" work
• sshd integration - https://git.cloudron.io/packages/gitea-app/-/tree/master/supervisor?ref_type=heads . Required for the "git clone" as well
• setup default user - https://git.cloudron.io/packages/gitea-app/-/blob/master/start.sh?ref_type=heads#L18
• setup oidc - https://git.cloudron.io/packages/gitea-app/-/blob/master/start.sh?ref_type=heads#L8
• mailer setup - https://git.cloudron.io/packages/gitea-app/-/blob/master/start.sh?ref_type=heads#L109

Probably missing others... but my note was generally to get the package in sync with gitea one. AFAIK gitea and forgejo deploy very similarly since they only recently forked.

I can do this tomorrow as well but wanted to leave a note in case you wanted to do it.

[timconsidine]

@girish thank you

I was not aware - I thought they were in sync - was probably rushing too much or jumping to conclusions. Will look into it. You will do a better job, I'm sure, but I will see if I can manage it - good experience (hopefully).

[timconsidine]

@girish I have made changes :

SSH :

• Manifest : Added tcpPorts.SSH_PORT (default 29418) to CloudronManifest.json . This tells Cloudron to open the firewall.
• Start Script : Configured SSH_PORT and SSH_LISTEN_PORT in start.sh to match the manifest.

OIDC (SSO) :

• Manifest : Added oidc addon to CloudronManifest.json .
• Start Script : Added setup_oidc function in start.sh which injects the OIDC configuration directly into the database ( login_source table) and enables OIDC in app.ini .

Admin User :

• Start Script : Added setup_admin function in start.sh . It checks if the user count is 0, and if so, creates a default admin user with a known password.

SMTP (Email) :

• Manifest : Added sendmail addon to CloudronManifest.json .
• Start Script : Configured [mailer] section in app.ini using Cloudron's environment variables ( CLOUDRON_MAIL_SMTP_SERVER , etc.).

Pushed v1.0.1 to git.cloudron.io/timconsidine/cloudron-forgejo

Once less job for you @girish, or hopefully less for you to fix

[girish]

@timconsidine awesome! setup_admin is missing, maybe you forgot to push? In bash, you can do set -eu at the top and this will make missing things error properly. git clone via ssh also doesn't work but I can debug that once you have pushed everything.

[timconsidine]

@girish hmmm, seems my commit / push is not working fully. It's probably a gremlin here because I push to my private repo and also to git.cloudron.io.

Investigating ...

[timconsidine]

@girish

• I have pushed a commit to git.cloudron.io (it was my IDE git setup only pushing to one repo and I was too dozey to notice)
• tested git clone ssh://git@git.cloudron.io:6000/xxx/xxx from a repo on my git.cloudron.io to a temp directory : no password prompt, tested clone success by ls of temp directory
• did not try ssh git push but I assumed it will work if the git clone ssh://git@git.cloudron.io:6000/xxx/xxx worked

[girish]

@timconsidine I am taking it forward here https://git.cloudron.io/packages/forgejo-app

[timconsidine]

@girish great ! hope my package was helpful start

[nebulon]

Locking this thread. The package is out and the forum category is at https://forum.cloudron.io/category/216/forgejo

[LoudLemur]

Well done timconsidine! Great stuff nebulon!