Gitea

Gitea is the lightest full-featured Git forge you can self-host. Single Go binary, runs on minimal hardware, supports repositories, issues, pull requests, code review, wikis, packages, and a container registry. MIT-licensed, fully free.

Deployment is straightforward: download the binary or use Docker, point it at a database, and you are running. SQLite works for small teams; Postgres for anything serious. It can run on a 512MB VPS. Gitea Actions gives you GitHub Actions-compatible CI/CD built in, so you can migrate workflows without rewriting them.

Teams moving off GitHub or GitLab for cost or data sovereignty reasons should look at Gitea first. It covers what most dev teams actually need from a Git host. GitLab self-hosted covers more but costs significantly more in resources and maintenance overhead.

The catch: Gitea is community-maintained. Enterprise features like SAML SSO exist but are less polished than GitLab's. If compliance-grade auth and audit tooling are required, GitLab or a managed GitHub plan is the safer choice.