head to head · open source
Gogs vs go-git
Gogs has 47,821 GitHub stars, 5,069 forks, 1,009 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. go-git has 7,723 stars, 1,035 forks, 248 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Gogs leads on adoption by 519% (47,821 vs 7,723 stars). Gogs is written in Go under MIT; go-git is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Gogs has attracted 11% 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 1 topic tag (git), 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
| Gogs | go-git | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 7.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-12 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.1K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Gogs if
- You weight community size — 48K 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 Gogs
Gogs is a self hosted Git service written in Go and released under the MIT licence, aimed at individuals and small teams who want their own repository hosting without adopting a full collaboration platform.
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 Gogs or go-git more popular?
Gogs has 47,821 GitHub stars and go-git has 7,723. Gogs has the larger community by that measure.
Are Gogs and go-git free?
Both are open source. Gogs is licensed under MIT and go-git under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Gogs and go-git?
Gogs 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, Gogs or go-git?
Choose Gogs if you want the larger community (47,821 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.