Launchpad Alternatives for Code, Bugs, Packages and Translations

Launchpad is Canonical's free platform for code hosting, bug tracking, translations and Ubuntu package builds (PPAs). It is very much alive, and the Launchpad blog announced bug tracking for PPAs on October 21, 2026. Parts of it are going away, though. Bazaar code hosting ended on December 11, 2025, per an earlier post, and the October 14, 2026 roadmap update retires Blueprints at the end of the 27.10 cycle, in October 2027, and says their data will be removed.

The same post says the team is considering replacing Launchpad Translations with a new platform on a similar timeline. Weblate is named as an obvious candidate, but no decision has been made. Few tools copy all of Launchpad, so the list below is split by job. The first two build packages, the next three host code and bugs, and the last two handle translations and desktop app distribution.

Prices below are as of November 6, 2026. Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

Open Build Service

A PPA only serves Ubuntu. The Open Build Service (OBS) builds the same source into packages for many distributions at once and publishes a repository for each. SUSE's public instance, build.opensuse.org, has almost 30,000 users building over 140,000 packages for 21 base distributions on 6 architectures, per the OBS site. Wikipedia lists Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Arch Linux and openSUSE among the targets, in both RPM and Debian formats.

The software is GPL licensed, so a company can run its own OBS for internal packages. That is something Launchpad never offered, since its PPAs only live on launchpad.net.

Best for: Projects that publish packages for more than one distribution.

Pricing:

• OBS software: free, GPL
• build.opensuse.org: hosted by SUSE; no public price

Watch out for:

• No price, quota or service terms are published for the public OBS instance, so heavy commercial use is a question to put to SUSE first.
• The self-hosted 2.10 line is still maintained, with 2.10.34 tagged in August 2026.

Official site: Open Build Service.

Fedora Copr

Copr is the Fedora world's PPA. You submit a source RPM, or point Copr at Git, PyPI, RubyGems or a script, and it builds the package and serves a yum/dnf repository, per the user docs. Targets include Fedora releases, Rawhide and EPEL.

Builds can run up to 5 hours by default, and you can raise that to 30 hours, or 50 on the Fedora instance. You need a Fedora account to create a project, and packages do not have to meet the full Fedora Packaging Guidelines.

Best for: Maintainers who need extra or test packages for Fedora and EPEL users.

Pricing:

• Free to use with a Fedora account
• Copr itself is free software

Watch out for:

• Old builds do not stay. The docs keep one build per package indefinitely and delete other builds, including failed ones, after 14 days.
• RPM only. There is no .deb output, so Ubuntu users still need another service.

Official site: Fedora Copr.

GitHub

For the code and bug tracker half of a Launchpad project, GitHub is where most projects go. Issues, pull requests and Actions CI cover what Launchpad's bug tracker, merge proposals and recipe builds did, and the free plan includes 2,000 Actions minutes a month.

Actions can build .deb files and attach them to a release. Each release allows up to 1,000 assets under 2 GiB each with no bandwidth cap, per the releases docs.

Best for: Projects that want the most contributors and free CI for building packages.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 2,000 Actions minutes a month
• Team: $4 per user per month
• Enterprise: $21 per user per month

Watch out for:

• A release asset is not an apt repository. Users download a .deb by hand and get no automatic updates unless you run a repo elsewhere.
• Launchpad links bugs to Ubuntu source packages and releases. GitHub issues have no notion of a distro series.

Official site: GitHub.

GitLab

GitLab is a good fit for distro-style work because Debian's own forge, Salsa, runs on it. A project gets issues, merge requests, CI pipelines and a package registry in one place, on GitLab.com or on your own server.

The pricing page gives free GitLab.com groups 400 compute minutes a month and 10 GiB per project, with 5 users per private top-level group. Public open source projects are not held to the private-group user limit.

Best for: Teams that want bug tracking, CI and package publishing from one tool.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 400 compute minutes a month, 10 GiB per project
• Premium: $29 per user per month, billed annually
• Ultimate: contact sales

Watch out for:

• The pricing page requires a card on file before you can use shared runners on GitLab.com.

Official site: GitLab.

Codeberg

Launchpad grew up around free software, and Codeberg keeps that focus. The Berlin non-profit Codeberg e.V. runs it on Forgejo, with Woodpecker CI available on request and Weblate behind Codeberg Translate, per the FAQ.

That means one account can cover code, issues and translations, the three Launchpad features most projects used. There are no paid plans.

Best for: Free software projects that want a community host with translations built in.

Pricing:

• Free; funded by donations and optional membership

Watch out for:

• No package builds. Codeberg has nothing like PPAs, and the FAQ asks projects to request space before passing 1.5 GiB of packages, LFS and attachments.

Official site: Codeberg.

Weblate

If Launchpad Translations is the part you depend on, Weblate is the tool Canonical itself named when it began weighing a replacement. It is a web translation platform that syncs with your Git repository, with unlimited languages, projects and translators on every hosted plan.

The hosting page offers a free Libre plan for public libre projects, with the same limits as the paid 160,000-string plan. Weblate is GPLv3+, so you can also self-host it at no cost.

Best for: Projects that need community translation after Launchpad Translations changes.

Pricing:

• Libre: free for public libre projects, 160,000 hosted strings
• Paid hosting: €47 a month for 10,000 strings up to €616 for 10,240,000, or 20% less yearly
• Self-hosted: free; support from €53 a month
• Prices exclude VAT; 14-day trial

Watch out for:

• Hosted strings count source strings times languages plus one, so a 1,000-string app in 15 languages already uses 16,000, per the hosting page.

Official site: Weblate.

Flathub

Many PPAs exist only to ship a newer version of a desktop app. Flathub solves that for every distribution at once: you publish a Flatpak manifest and users on Ubuntu, Fedora or Arch install the same build.

Submission is a pull request against the new-pr branch of the flathub/flathub repository on GitHub, per the submission docs. Approved apps get their own repository in the Flathub GitHub organization, and you must turn on 2FA.

Best for: Desktop apps that used a PPA to reach Ubuntu users with fresh versions.

Pricing:

• Free for users; the submission docs list no fee

Watch out for:

• Volunteer reviewers can reject a submission or recall it after merging, and pull requests with heavy AI-generated content may be closed unreviewed.
• It does not replace PPAs for libraries, kernels or system packages.

Official site: Flathub.

How to choose

When to stay with Launchpad

Keep using Launchpad if your users run Ubuntu and install from your PPA. No other service puts packages into apt as directly, and new features keep arriving, including PPA dependency pinning in September 2026 and PPA bug tracking in October. If you still use Blueprints, export them before October 2027. If you only need a download page for binaries, our SourceForge alternatives cover that case.

Frequently asked questions