Forgejo vs Gitea Mirror
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted git hosting & forges options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Forgejo
Community-driven self-hosted software forge
VS
Gitea Mirror
Automatically mirror GitHub repositories to a Gitea server
| Feature | Forgejo | Gitea Mirror |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Category | Git Hosting & Forges | Git Hosting & Forges |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, bare-metal | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,000 | ★ 1,452 |
| First released | 2022 | 2024 |
| Replaces | GitHub, GitLab | GitHub |
What are Forgejo and Gitea Mirror?
Forgejo
Forgejo is a community-governed fork of Gitea providing a self-hosted Git forge with issues, pull requests, and CI. It targets developers wanting a fully community-controlled code platform. It is deployed via Docker or a single binary.
- Community-governed Gitea fork
- Forgejo Actions CI
- Federation in development
- Lightweight single binary
Gitea Mirror
Gitea Mirror Manager is a tool that automatically discovers and mirrors GitHub repositories and organizations into a self-hosted Gitea instance. It keeps local copies up to date on a schedule.
- Automatic GitHub mirroring
- Organization discovery
- Scheduled sync
- Web dashboard
Forgejo vs Gitea Mirror: key differences
Forgejo is written in Go, while Gitea Mirror is built with TypeScript. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for Forgejo versus MIT for Gitea Mirror. Forgejo is the more established project (first released 2022), while Gitea Mirror arrived in 2024. Forgejo has the considerably larger community, at 5,000 GitHub stars versus 1,452.
Why pick each one
Choose Forgejo if…
- Strong community governance
- Lightweight and fast
- Active development
Watch out for
- Smaller ecosystem than Gitea
- Federation still maturing
Choose Gitea Mirror if…
- Keeps offline backups
- Simple configuration
Watch out for
- One-way mirroring
- Requires Gitea
Frequently asked questions
Is Forgejo or Gitea Mirror better?
Neither is universally better. Forgejo has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Forgejo and Gitea Mirror free and open-source?
Yes. Forgejo is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Gitea Mirror under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Forgejo and Gitea Mirror with Docker?
Forgejo: yes. Gitea Mirror: yes.