head to head · open source
Gitea vs ripwire
Gitea has 58,594 GitHub stars, 7,310 forks, 2,455 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ripwire has 2,461 stars, 157 forks, 66 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Gitea leads on adoption by 2,281% (58,594 vs 2,461 stars). Gitea is written in Go under MIT; ripwire is written in C++ under Apache-2.0. Gitea has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, ripwire 6%. Gitea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | ripwire | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 59K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-10-21 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.3K | ⑂ 157 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Gitea if
- You weight community size — 59K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ripwire if
- You want the ripwire feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and ripwire fits your workflow better
About Gitea
Gitea 繁體中文 简体中文 Purpose The goal of Gitea is to make the easiest, fastest, and most painless way of setting up a self hosted all in one software development service, including Git hosting, code management, code review, issue tracking, project kanban, wiki, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD which can reuse GitHub Actions. As Gitea is written in Go, it works across all the platforms and architectures that are supported by Go, including Linux, macOS, FreeBSD/OpenBSD and Windows on x86, amd64, ARM, RISC V 64 and PowerPC architectures. For online demonstrations, you can visit demo.gitea.com. For…
read the full Gitea overview →
About ripwire
Rip'n Fast. Fewer Tokens. Better Code. The ripgrep of AI context. A map before your agent reads the repo — and a check on what it writes. Ranked, deterministic call graph: what to touch, what it breaks, which tests to run. On the edit: blast radius, tests that reach it, twelve quality kinds reporting only what got worse, forgotten co changes, fields read and written, names that resolve more than one way. Just want to use it? Install it with the one line below, then start each coding session by telling your agent to use it, for example: "Use ripwire on this repo." That is all most people need: the install also…
read the full ripwire overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Gitea or ripwire more popular?
Gitea has 58,594 GitHub stars and ripwire has 2,461. Gitea has the larger community by that measure.
Are Gitea and ripwire free?
Both are open source. Gitea is licensed under MIT and ripwire under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Gitea and ripwire?
Gitea is written in Go and ripwire in C++. 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 ripwire?
Choose Gitea if you want the larger community (58,594 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ripwire if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.