# Gitea 195 Hacker News commenters recommended Gitea and 51 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 5 years (20 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A lightweight, easy-to-run self-hosted GitHub alternative with mirroring and Actions-compatible CI; critics cite vague security fix disclosures, permission gaps and its commercial company ties. ## Why people recommend it - Lightweight, runs on cheap hardware (5 comments): "It's easier, and somehow more reliable to self-host a Gitea instance on consumer hardware than it is to rely on GitHub." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928210)) "People should either self-host a gitea/forgejo/gogs server for like 3$ a month on hetzner or just use gitea.com." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49004592)) "Gitea (and its popular fork, Forgejo) are very lightweight. You can easily stand up an instance on a cheap VPS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331429)) - Automatic repository mirroring (5 comments): "I can also recommend hosting your own Gitea/Forgejo instance, it has an automatic repository mirroring feature that fetches the repo regularly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49989839)) "Given that gitea also allows mirroring with Github, the team would be able to even switch to Gitea as the "main" git remote" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49332638)) "I use it as my main forge and mirror to Github for discoverability and community reports and contributions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843703)) - Reliable with years of uptime (5 comments): "Has been running for 3 years! If you lock it down so that it is just available in LAN and no internet, it is a solid, timeless experience." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125175)) "It's easier, and somehow more reliable to self-host a Gitea instance on consumer hardware than it is to rely on GitHub." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47928210)) "I cannot recommend it enough after using it "in production" daily for more than five years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097447)) - GitHub-like UI and features (5 comments): "using a self-hosted instance of Gitea / Forgejo will give you a replacement for the essential parts of GitHub" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46760412)) "The Gitea interface is already a pretty good interface that can be accessed from any browser on any device." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48380923)) "it's working very well and brings a rather large set of features you'd expect from a GH alternative" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47087927)) ## What people warn about - Opaque security fix announcements (3 comments): "Bizarre policy. Any bad guys unaware of the security implications are analyzing the patch diffs as we speak, so this seems nonsensical to me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49914666)) "a commit and PR solely described as "Fix path resolving" making it hard for anyone running Gitea to even know this is a security fix" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654209)) "That's quite annoying - "security fixes" - but no information if your installation is affected or not?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49919919)) - Commercial company distrust (3 comments): "I will prefer the product which does not have a commercial offering and financial incentives to sabotage it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45930065)) "I also evaluated gitea and saw they were offering a commercial multitenant service where my 3p hosting wouldn't be welcome" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105417)) "Gitea on the other hand doesn't mind sucking up free-of-charge contributions and handing them to a company" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931229)) - Permissions and auth gaps (2 comments): "the permissions system needs a lot of work. There's still an open bug which doesn't let anyone but the repo owner read CI logs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47929824)) "I've started hosting most of my private projects on a self hosted gitea, but one roadblock I've found is oidc auth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50311021)) - Actions runner compatibility issues (2 comments): "locking out features purely because "that's what GitHub does" was just utterly unacceptable to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947666)) "A lot of actions, maybe even the entire action runner itself wouldn't/couldn't/didn't work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49933029)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [GitHub](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github.md): 764 recommend - [Forgejo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/forgejo.md): 380 recommend - [GitLab](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitlab.md): 331 recommend - [Codeberg](https://hackerapproved.com/p/codeberg.md): 331 recommend - [Tangled](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tangled.md): 127 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Gitea", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gitea/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).