GitLab Alternatives for Hosted and Self-Hosted Git

GitLab is active and shipping monthly. Version 19.5, the October 2026 release, made the GitLab MCP server generally available, per the GitLab 19 release notes. The product still covers Git hosting, merge requests, CI/CD, a package and container registry, security scanning and planning, on GitLab.com or on your own servers.

The usual reasons to leave are price and weight. The GitLab pricing page caps the free plan at 5 users per private top-level group on GitLab.com, with 400 compute minutes and 10 GiB of storage, and Premium jumps to $29 per user per month billed annually. Ultimate has no public price. Self-managed installs need a large server. The seven options below run from cheap hosted platforms to light self-hosted forges. Prices are in US dollars.

Prices below are as of November 8, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

GitHub

GitHub is where most GitLab users land when they stop self-hosting. Pull requests, Actions, Packages, Dependabot and code search cover the core of GitLab Premium, and GitHub's importer can copy any Git repository and keep the full history. The free plan has no user cap on private repositories.

Prices are lower at every step. The GitHub pricing page lists Team at $4 per user per month with $18 of Actions compute, about 3,000 Linux minutes, and Enterprise at $21 with $300, about 50,000 Linux minutes. Enterprise also includes GitHub Enterprise Server for teams that must keep code on their own hardware.

Best for: Teams that want a hosted platform and the largest ecosystem of CI actions and integrations.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, $12 of Actions compute a month (about 2,000 Linux minutes), 500 MB Packages
• Team: $4 per user per month, $18 of compute (about 3,000 Linux minutes), 2 GB Packages
• Enterprise: $21 per user per month, $300 of compute (about 50,000 Linux minutes), 50 GB Packages

Watch out for:

• Code scanning and secret scanning for private repositories are paid add-ons on top of the plan price, where GitLab Ultimate includes its scanners.
• Pipelines need a rewrite from .gitlab-ci.yml to GitHub Actions workflows.

Official site: GitHub.

Forgejo

Forgejo is a self-hosted forge run by the non-profit Codeberg e.V. It ships issues, pull requests, a package registry and Forgejo Actions in a single Go binary, and a small VM handles a team that would need a 16 GB GitLab server. Its migration tool can pull repositories, issues and merge requests from a GitLab instance.

The Forgejo releases page lists v17.0.1 from October 26, 2026, supported until January 28, 2027. The LTS line, v15.0.11, is supported until July 15, 2027. New code has been GPLv3+ since v9.0, while most of the code base is still MIT.

Best for: Self-hosters who want GitLab's core features on a fraction of the hardware.

Pricing:

• Free software, no paid edition
• Your cost is the server

Watch out for:

• Forgejo Actions follows GitHub Actions syntax, so GitLab pipelines must be rewritten, and some GitHub-only actions will not work.
• Stable releases are supported for about three months. Teams that upgrade rarely should stay on LTS.

Official site: Forgejo.

Bitbucket

Atlassian's Git host makes the most sense when planning already lives in Jira. Branches, commits and pull requests link to Jira issues, and Bitbucket Pipelines runs CI from a YAML file in the repo, roughly like GitLab CI. Pull requests support merge checks and required approvals.

Costs are low. The Bitbucket pricing page lists Free for up to 5 users, Standard at $3.65 per user per month and Premium at $8. Extra build minutes or storage cost $10 a month per 1,000 minutes or 100 GB.

Best for: Jira teams that want cheap Git hosting with built-in CI.

Pricing:

• Free: up to 5 users, 50 build minutes a month, 1 GB per repository
• Standard: $3.65 per user per month
• Premium: $8 per user per month
• Extra 1,000 build minutes or 100 GB: $10 per month

Watch out for:

• Fifty free build minutes a month is tiny next to GitLab Free's 400.
• New customers can't buy self-hosted Bitbucket. Atlassian stopped selling Data Center to new customers on March 30, 2026, and its Hybrid License is only for existing customers.

Official site: Bitbucket.

OneDev

Of the self-hosted picks, OneDev is the closest to GitLab's all-in-one idea. Git hosting, CI/CD, a package registry, code search, a wiki and a kanban board that moves issues automatically come in one Java install, MIT licensed. Pipelines can be built in a GUI editor, then stored as YAML in the repository.

The free Community edition already includes LDAP, Active Directory, SSO and the CI engine. The OneDev pricing page puts Enterprise at $6 per user per month with a minimum order of 12 user-months, adding high availability, security scanning, audit logs and time tracking.

Best for: Small teams that want GitLab-style CI built into the forge on one server.

Pricing:

• Community: free
• Enterprise: $6 per user per month, minimum 12 user-months
• Disabled users, service accounts and AI users are not counted

Watch out for:

• There is no hosted plan. You run and back up the server yourself.
• The community is far smaller than GitLab's, and development happens on the project's own server, code.onedev.io.

Official site: OneDev.

Gitea

Gitea is the MIT-licensed forge Forgejo split from, and it is still moving fast: v28.3.0 arrived on November 1, 2026 with 20 security fixes. It runs as one Go binary on Linux, Windows or macOS, and Gitea Actions is designed to be mostly compatible with GitHub Actions workflows.

Unlike Forgejo, Gitea has a company behind it that sells support. The Gitea pricing page lists Enterprise at $9.50 per user per month, discounted from $19, on a one-year commitment, and a managed Gitea Cloud priced on request. Our Gitea alternatives page compares it with other light forges.

Best for: Teams that want a light self-hosted forge with an optional paid support contract.

Pricing:

• Open source: free, MIT, unlimited users and repositories
• Enterprise: $9.50 per user per month (listed down from $19), one-year commitment, 30-day trial
• Gitea Cloud: price on request

Watch out for:

• Gitea's trademark and domains belong to Gitea Ltd, the for-profit company whose arrival in 2022 prompted the Forgejo fork.

Official site: Gitea.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps bundles Git repos, Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Test Plans and Artifacts, which maps well to GitLab's plan, code, build and package stages. It is the obvious pick for .NET teams that already sign in with Microsoft Entra ID.

The Azure DevOps pricing page makes the first 5 users free, then charges $6 per user per month. Pipelines include one free Microsoft-hosted job with 1,800 minutes a month, and each extra hosted job is $40 a month.

Best for: Microsoft-centred teams that want planning, code and CI in one service.

Pricing:

• Basic: first 5 users free, then $6 per user per month
• Basic + Test Plans: $52 per user per month
• Extra hosted parallel job: $40 per month; extra self-hosted job: $15 per month
• Artifacts: 2 GiB free, then from $2 per GiB

Watch out for:

• Public projects are being retired. Microsoft's docs say new ones can no longer be created and existing ones convert to private in 2027, so it is a poor home for open source.
• Paying per parallel job and per user at once makes bills harder to predict than GitLab's single seat price.

Official site: Azure DevOps.

Codeberg

Open source maintainers leaving GitLab.com can host on Codeberg for free. It runs Forgejo on hardware the non-profit Codeberg e.V. owns in Berlin, with Woodpecker CI available on request and Weblate for translations, per the Codeberg FAQ.

Membership in the association is optional, and the service is funded by donations. Projects above 750 MiB of Git data or 1.5 GiB of packages and LFS are asked to get in touch first.

Best for: Free software projects that want hosting run by a non-profit.

Pricing:

• Free to use; the association lives on donations and optional memberships
• Ask before passing 750 MiB of Git storage or 1.5 GiB of packages and LFS

Watch out for:

• Company code is not welcome. Each contributor gets only 100 MB for private content, and the FAQ rules out hosting private commercial projects.

Official site: Codeberg.

How to choose

When to stay with GitLab

Stay on GitLab if you use more than Git and CI. Security scanning, compliance pipelines, the registry and planning in one permission model take several tools to replace. Self-managed GitLab Free has no 5-user cap, so a team with a big enough server can keep it at no licence cost. Premium seats now come with $12 of GitLab Credits per user per month for AI features, a limited-time promotion.

Frequently asked questions