Forgejo vs Gitea Comparison

report · for developers and DevOps engineers evaluating self-hosted Git solutions in #systemcrafters · 2026-07-15 14:06 UTC

Research: compare forgejo to gitea. include others, if relevant

Forgejo vs Gitea: A Comparison

TL;DR: Forgejo is a community-governed hard fork of Gitea (under non-profit Codeberg e.V.), created in late 2022 after Gitea's trademarks/domains were transferred to a for-profit company; the two projects have since diverged in governance, licensing, testing practices, and feature roadmap — most notably Forgejo's push into federation via ActivityPub/ForgeFed.

Fork origin and governance

Forgejo was announced on December 15, 2022 as a soft fork of Gitea after lead maintainer Lunny Xiao and Matti Ranta transferred Gitea's trademarks and domains to the for-profit Gitea Ltd. [2][7].
Community demands to move Gitea to a community non-profit and rename the company were rejected by Gitea Ltd. with a "blunt no" [6].
Forgejo is stewarded by Codeberg e.V., a Berlin-based non-profit that holds the domains and trademarks; Gitea remains controlled by a for-profit company [1][7][8].
Forgejo emphasizes transparent, democratic governance with auditable decision records [3].

Technical differences

Forgejo became a hard fork in February 2024 (after Gitea v1.21), no longer guaranteeing drop-in replacement, though the API strives to remain Gitea-compatible [2][5][7].
Licensing: Forgejo moved from MIT to GPL (copyleft) in August 2024 and uses only free/libre licenses; Gitea remains MIT but operates an Open Core model with non-free features in its SaaS offering [1][2][3].
Contribution policy: Gitea now requires copyright assignment even for MIT-licensed contributions — a policy that reportedly blocked a Forgejo security patch; Forgejo does not require assignment [1][9].
Testing: Forgejo mandates tests per change and runs end-to-end/upgrade tests; as of June 2025, Gitea reportedly had only an example browser test [1][5].
Security disclosures: Forgejo publishes advance security notices to everyone; Gitea reserves advance notice for customers [1].

Feature parity and roadmap divergence

Forgejo adopted Semantic Versioning post-hard-fork, releasing v7.0 LTS on April 23, 2024 [2].
Forgejo has accepted features Gitea has not, and no longer applies Gitea commits on top of its tree [5][7].
Federation (ForgeFed / ActivityPub): A flagship Forgejo init

Claims checked

✓ supported — Forgejo was announced on December 15, 2022 as a soft fork of Gitea after Lunny Xiao and Matti Ranta transferred Gitea's trademarks and domains to for-profit Gitea Ltd. — Source [7] confirms December 15, 2022 announcement and transfer by Xiao and Ranta to Gitea Ltd.; [2] confirms fork origin.
✓ supported — Community demands to move Gitea to a community non-profit were rejected by Gitea Ltd. with a 'blunt no'. — Source [6] directly states Gitea Ltd. responded with a blunt 'no' to the open letter's demands.
✓ supported — Forgejo became a hard fork in February 2024 after Gitea v1.21, no longer guaranteeing drop-in replacement but keeping API compatibility. — Sources [5] and [7] confirm February 16, 2024 hard fork announcement, post-v1.21 divergence, and API compatibility goal.
✓ supported — Forgejo moved from MIT to GPL in August 2024. — Source [2] explicitly states this.
✓ supported — Gitea's copyright assignment requirement blocked a Forgejo security patch. — Source [9] confirms Gitea blocked a significant security patch due to the copyright assignment requirement.
✓ supported — Forgejo released v7.0 LTS on April 23, 2024 after adopting Semantic Versioning. — Source [2] directly confirms this date, version, LTS designation, and SemVer adoption.

Sources

Generated by tink · sources are web pages; verify anything important.