Open-source alternatives to GitLab
Self-host a GitLab alternative from $4.13/mo and save up to $298/yr per seat vs GitLab. 8 open-source projects that replace GitLab, ranked by computed health score and real self-hosting cost.
Why people leave GitLab
- Premium and Ultimate tiers gate basic CI/CD features
- Per-user pricing for orgs ($29-99/user/mo)
- Self-managed Community Edition lags behind cloud
- Many security/compliance features Ultimate-only
Gitea Actions and Forgejo Actions give CI/CD + repo hosting at a fraction of the resource overhead.
The 8 alternatives, ranked by health
Health score is a 6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.
Git with a cup of tea! Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD
Quickly clone or backup massive amounts of org/users repositories into one directory - Supports GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and more
Webhook receiver for GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Gogs
Get Android app updates straight from the source.
Generate Nix fetcher calls from URLs [maintainer=@figsoda]
Ready to use Slack bot for lazy developers: start Jenkins jobs, watch Jira tickets, watch pull requests with AI support...
Froggit-Go is a universal Go library, allowing to perform actions on VCS providers.
Easy to use and modular library to make self updating golang programs
Compare the top GitLab alternatives head-to-head
Side-by-side breakdowns and self-hosting cost for the leading picks.
Cost comparison vs GitLab
Self-hosting cost on cheapest plan meeting requirements vs GitLab entry tier ($29/mo).
| Project | Self-host /mo | GitLab /mo | Save /yr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| gitea | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| ghorg | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| webhooks | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| Obtainium | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| nurl | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| slack-bot | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| froggit-go | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
| go-rocket-update | $4.13 | $29+ | $298 | Deploy → |
Pick your alternative
Most operators land on gitea (top health score in this category; cheapest VPS path is gitea on hetzner for $4.13/mo).
Data refreshed daily. Pricing for GitLab sourced from official site.