head to head · open source
Gitea vs Shelve
Gitea has 58,048 GitHub stars, 7,153 forks, 2,455 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Shelve has 456 stars, 40 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Gitea leads on adoption by 12,630% (58,048 vs 456 stars). Gitea is written in Go under MIT; Shelve is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Gitea has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Shelve 9%. Gitea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (github), 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 | Shelve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 58K | ★ 456 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.2K | ⑂ 40 |
| 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 Shelve if
- You want the Shelve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Shelve 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 Shelve
Shelve is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed secrets and environment variable manager for software teams, distributed as the @shelve/cli package for npm and offered as a hosted application at shelve.cloud, built to replace scattered .env files and manually copied keys with one centralized, encrypted vault.
read the full Shelve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Gitea or Shelve more popular?
Gitea has 58,048 GitHub stars and Shelve has 456. Gitea has the larger community by that measure.
Are Gitea and Shelve free?
Both are open source. Gitea is licensed under MIT and Shelve under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Gitea and Shelve?
Gitea is written in Go and Shelve in TypeScript. 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 Shelve?
Choose Gitea if you want the larger community (58,048 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Shelve if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.