SourceForge Alternatives for Code and Download Hosting

SourceForge has not shut down. The home page, signed "© 2026 Slashdot Media", says developers have created over 500,000 projects there and that it serves more than 2.6 million software downloads a day. It also doubles as a business software review directory now, which is most of what the front page promotes.

Many projects left during 2013 to 2016. Wikipedia's history covers the DevShare program that bundled ad-supported content into installers, GIMP pulling its downloads in November 2013, and the 2015 takeover of abandoned projects. New owner BIZX ended DevShare in February 2016 and began malware scanning that May. If you are moving code, binaries, or both, the seven services below cover each case. Prices were read from each vendor's pricing page on November 6, 2026.

Our method is on How we review tools.

Quick comparison

GitHub

For a SourceForge project that mainly ships installers, GitHub Releases does the same job with fewer limits. The releases docs allow up to 1,000 assets per release, each under 2 GiB, and state there is no limit on total release size or bandwidth. Each release is tied to a Git tag, so the download page and the source stay in sync.

The pricing page gives free organizations 2,000 Actions minutes and 500 MB of Packages storage a month. That covers building binaries for most small projects.

Best for: Open source projects that want the biggest contributor audience and simple release downloads.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 2,000 CI/CD minutes per month, 500 MB Packages storage
• Team: $4 per user per month, 3,000 minutes, 2 GB storage
• Enterprise: $21 per user per month, 50,000 minutes, 50 GB storage, 30-day trial

Watch out for:

• Download counts do not appear in the web interface. The docs point you to the Releases API to read them, where SourceForge shows stats on the project page.
• There are no download mirrors. Every file comes from GitHub's own servers.

Official site: GitHub.

GitLab

GitLab puts code, issues, CI/CD pipelines, a package registry and security scanning in one product. Teams leaving SourceForge's old Allura tools for a single integrated system usually land here. It can also be run on your own servers.

The free tier on GitLab.com allows 5 users per private top-level group, 400 compute minutes a month and 10 GiB of storage per project, per the pricing page. Premium raises that to 10,000 minutes and 500 GiB per project.

Best for: Projects that want CI/CD, a registry and planning tools from one vendor.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, 5 users per private top-level group, 400 compute minutes per month, 10 GiB per project
• Premium: $29 per user per month, billed annually, 10,000 minutes
• Ultimate: custom pricing (contact sales), 50,000 minutes

Watch out for:

• The pricing page says card details are required to use GitLab.com shared runners, despite the "No credit card required" headline on the free plan.
• The jump from free to Premium is large for a small team, and the included GitLab Credits are marked as a limited-time promotion.

Official site: GitLab.

Codeberg

Run by the non-profit Codeberg e.V., Codeberg is the closest in spirit to early SourceForge: a free home for free software. The FAQ says most services run on its own hardware in a rented facility in Berlin. The forge software is Forgejo, Woodpecker CI powers Codeberg CI, and git-pages serves Codeberg Pages.

There is no quota for valid use. The FAQ asks you to request resources first if you plan to pass 750 MiB of Git storage or 1.5 GiB of packages, LFS and attachments. Membership in the association is optional.

Best for: Open source maintainers who want a free, non-profit host outside the big US platforms.

Pricing:

• Free for public free software projects; donations requested
• Optional Codeberg e.V. membership (fee not listed in the FAQ)

Watch out for:

• Private space is small. The FAQ allows contributors up to 100 MB of private content and says Codeberg does not offer private hosting for commercial projects.

Official site: Codeberg.

Bitbucket

Atlassian's Bitbucket Cloud is aimed at private team code, not public downloads. Its strength is the link to Jira: branches, commits and pull requests show up on Jira issues, and Pipelines builds run in the same place.

The pricing page lists the free plan as free forever for up to 5 users, with 50 Pipelines minutes, 1 GB of LFS storage and 1 GB per repository. Extra packs cost $10 a month for 1,000 build minutes or 100 GB of storage.

Best for: Private repositories for small teams already paying for Jira.

Pricing:

• Free: $0, up to 5 users, 50 build minutes
• Standard: $3.65 per user per month
• Premium: $8 per user per month
• Add-ons: $10 per month for 1,000 build minutes or 100 GB

Watch out for:

• Build minutes are weighted by runner size, so a 5-minute step on a 2x runner uses 10 minutes, per the pricing page. The free 50 minutes go fast.
• Public open source projects get little exposure there compared with GitHub or Codeberg.

Official site: Bitbucket.

Forgejo or Gitea (self-hosted)

To keep full control of code and downloads, run your own forge. Forgejo is the community fork that Codeberg uses. The releases page lists v17.0.1 from October 26, 2026, supported until January 28, 2027, and an LTS line, v15.0.11, supported until July 15, 2027. Container images come from codeberg.org/forgejo/forgejo.

Gitea, the project Forgejo forked from, is free and MIT licensed with unlimited users and repositories. Its company also sells Gitea Enterprise and a managed Gitea Cloud. Both tools give you repos, issues, pull requests, packages and release files on one small server.

Best for: Organizations that need code and binaries on their own hardware.

Pricing:

• Forgejo: free software, no paid edition
• Gitea Open Source: free, MIT licence
• Gitea Enterprise: listed as $9.5 per user per month next to a $19 figure, 1-year commitment with online payment, 30-day trial
• Gitea Cloud: no public price on the pricing page

Watch out for:

• You run backups, upgrades and security patches. Forgejo stable releases have short support windows (v17 ends January 28, 2027), per the releases page, so stick to the LTS line if you upgrade rarely.
• The Gitea Enterprise price is unclear on the pricing page, which shows two figures without explaining which applies.

Official site: Forgejo or Gitea (self-hosted).

Launchpad

Canonical's Launchpad is the hub for Ubuntu and many Linux projects. Its project docs list a bug tracker, code hosting, a user support tracker, translations and a specification tracker. It also builds and hosts distribution packages and offers file downloads, which SourceForge users will recognise.

Registering a free software project costs nothing. Choosing an Other/Proprietary licence only grants a 30-day trial, and the docs say Canonical no longer sells commercial subscriptions.

Best for: Linux projects that ship Ubuntu packages or rely on community translations.

Pricing:

• Free for free software projects
• Proprietary projects: 30-day trial only; commercial subscriptions are no longer sold

Watch out for:

• Bazaar code hosting ended on December 11, 2025, per the Launchpad blog. Old bzr branches had to move to Git.

Official site: Launchpad.

SourceHut

SourceHut is a set of plain, fast web services: git.sr.ht and hg.sr.ht for Git and Mercurial, todo.sr.ht for tickets, lists.sr.ht for mailing lists and builds.sr.ht for CI. Contributions usually arrive as patches sent to a project's mailing list rather than as pull requests.

The pricing page offers three tiers at €4, €8 and €12 per month ($4, $8 and $12) with identical features, so you pick what you can afford. Financial aid is available, and the software is open source if you prefer to host it yourself.

Best for: Developers who like mailing-list workflows and want to pay a small, flat fee.

Pricing:

• €4, €8 or €12 per month ($4, $8, $12), plus VAT; all tiers have the same access
• Contributing to existing projects needs no payment
• Financial aid on request

Watch out for:

• SourceHut is still in public alpha. The pricing page says builds.sr.ht and chat.sr.ht already require payment and that the list of paid services may change.

Official site: SourceHut.

How to choose

When to stay with SourceForge

Keep your SourceForge page if users already find your downloads there. It still draws over 20 million visitors, by its own count, and moving a download URL breaks links in old tutorials and forums. Many projects keep code on GitHub or Codeberg and leave SourceForge as a download listing that points to the new home.

Frequently asked questions