head to head · open source
Gitea vs go-git
Gitea has 58,048 GitHub stars, 7,153 forks, 2,455 open issues and last shipped yesterday. go-git has 7,723 stars, 1,035 forks, 248 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Gitea leads on adoption by 652% (58,048 vs 7,723 stars). Gitea is written in Go under MIT; go-git is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Gitea has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, go-git 13%. go-git was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (git, git-server), 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 | go-git | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 58K | ★ 7.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.2K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 go-git if
- You want the go-git feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and go-git 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 go-git
go git is a pure Go implementation of Git, published as the library github.com/go git/go git/v6 , for Go developers who need to read, write and manipulate Git repositories from inside their own programs instead of shelling out to the git binary.
read the full go-git overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Gitea or go-git more popular?
Gitea has 58,048 GitHub stars and go-git has 7,723. Gitea has the larger community by that measure.
Are Gitea and go-git free?
Both are open source. Gitea is licensed under MIT and go-git under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Gitea and go-git?
Gitea is written in Go and go-git 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 go-git?
Choose Gitea if you want the larger community (58,048 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose go-git if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.