head to head · open source
Gitea vs Encore
Gitea has 58,080 GitHub stars, 7,157 forks, 2,455 open issues and last shipped today. Encore has 12,369 stars, 622 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Gitea leads on adoption by 370% (58,080 vs 12,369 stars). Gitea is written in Go under MIT; Encore is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Gitea has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Encore 5%. Gitea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Gitea | Encore | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 58K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.2K | ⑂ 622 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Gitea if
- You weight community size — 58K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Encore if
- You want the Encore feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Encore fits your workflow better
About Gitea
Gitea is a self hosted, all in one software development service written in Go. It provides Git hosting, code review, issue tracking, project management (kanban), wiki, team collaboration, package registry, and CI/CD capabilities. The project aims to deliver a lightweight, painless alternative to larger platforms by running as a single binary across Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Windows on multiple architectures.
read the full Gitea overview →
About Encore
Encore is an open source infrastructure platform for backend development, written in Go under MPL 2.0. It lives in the Go and TypeScript cloud native ecosystem and lets developers declare databases, Pub/Sub, object storage, caches, cron jobs, and secrets in application code. The project combines an infrastructure SDK with an optional managed platform that deploys to a user's AWS or GCP account.
read the full Encore overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Gitea or Encore more popular?
Gitea has 58,080 GitHub stars and Encore has 12,369. Gitea has the larger community by that measure.
Are Gitea and Encore free?
Both are open source. Gitea is licensed under MIT and Encore under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Gitea and Encore?
Gitea is written in Go and Encore in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Gitea or Encore?
Choose Gitea if you want the larger community (58,080 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Encore if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.