Forgejo Hosting

How Forgejo works

Forgejo organises source code into repositories with branches, commits, tags, releases, issues, pull requests, reviews, labels, milestones, projects, wikis, packages, users, teams, and permissions. Web-based collaboration gives maintainers a central place to discuss changes and review contributions, while supported Git clients interact with repositories through configured web protocols.

Forgejo Actions can coordinate automation workflows, but execution requires separately installed and registered runners. The catalogue package does not include a runner fleet, build image, deployment target, registry subscription, or secret-management service. Workflow definitions and runner security remain the customer’s responsibility.

Key Forgejo features

Repository growth, package uploads, attachments, release assets, issue history, search indexes, and user activity consume storage and processing. The catalogue does not provision PostgreSQL or MariaDB, so the requirements table says Not required for an external relational database. Forgejo may use its own local application storage according to configuration, which must be protected with repositories and metadata.

Application email is disabled. Email notifications, password recovery, account confirmation, and reply-by-email workflows cannot be presented as available. Teams should retain administrator access, use the web interface for notifications, and configure external identity only when they supply and maintain the required provider registrations.

Forgejo vs GitHub

Forgejo provides repository hosting and collaboration on a customer-administered installation, with governance centred on the free-software community around Forgejo and Codeberg. GitHub is a provider-operated developer platform with a large public network, hosted repositories, Issues, Projects, pull requests, Actions, packages, marketplaces, applications, and organisation controls.

GitHub may suit teams that value its public contributor network, managed automation capacity, commercial support options, and broad integration ecosystem. Forgejo is attractive when repository location, domain, user administration, and platform governance should remain under the operator’s control, provided the team accepts responsibility for upgrades, runners, storage, and policy.

Who uses Forgejo

Small engineering teams host private projects, open-source communities maintain public repositories, agencies separate client code, and internal IT groups keep scripts or configuration under review. Issues and pull requests provide a familiar workflow without outsourcing the core forge to a public provider.

Forgejo is not a complete software-delivery service by itself. Production deployments still need independent backups, runner isolation, artefact retention rules, secrets management, vulnerability scanning, release controls, and monitoring appropriate to the organisation’s risk.

Self-hosting Forgejo: requirements and cost

Forgejo demand grows with repository size, Git operations, users, pull requests, issue activity, code search, package storage, release assets, attachments, and automation metadata. Forgejo does not receive a PostgreSQL or MariaDB service in this catalogue stack. Repositories and packages can still exceed an entry allocation even though the mapping does not classify the app as storage-driven.

On AvaHost, Forgejo uses Plan 1 at €2. The hosted Forgejo package includes one-click deployment, a custom domain with automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. The package includes the Forgejo web application, not Actions runners, build workers, deployment targets, vulnerability scanning, secret scanning, external identity registrations, or email delivery. Administrators must define registration policy, protect accounts, monitor repository storage, and keep independent copies of critical source code.