Gitea Hosting

How Gitea works

Gitea combines repository hosting with branches, commits, tags, releases, issues, pull requests, reviews, projects, wikis, packages, users, organisations, teams, and permissions. Developers collaborate through the web interface and supported Git clients, while maintainers control repository visibility, contribution rules, labels, milestones, and release assets.

Gitea Actions can interpret compatible workflow files, but jobs run on separately registered runners. The catalogue package does not include execution workers, container images, deployment destinations, external registries, or a secret-management service. Administrators must isolate runners and understand what repository code can execute before enabling automation.

Key Gitea features

The catalogue does not provision PostgreSQL or MariaDB, so an external relational database is Not required for this template. Repository objects, application metadata, packages, attachments, indexes, and configuration still need durable application storage. Source code should also have independent mirrors or backups appropriate to its importance.

Application email is disabled, which affects mail notifications, account recovery, confirmations, and other email-based workflows. External authentication providers require separately registered applications and customer-managed secrets. Registration policy, public repository use, package retention, and user permissions must be configured deliberately.

Gitea vs GitHub

Gitea provides an all-in-one development service on a customer-administered installation, with local responsibility for repositories, users, upgrades, storage, and runners. GitHub operates a global hosted platform with public discovery, repositories, pull requests, Issues, Projects, Actions, packages, applications, marketplaces, and commercial organisation features.

GitHub may suit organisations that want a broad integration ecosystem, managed automation infrastructure, provider support, and access to its public contributor network. Gitea is attractive for small teams that want a familiar forge on their own domain and are prepared to manage policy, backups, runners, and growth themselves.

Who uses Gitea

Freelancers keep client repositories separate, small companies host internal code, teaching teams manage course projects, and open-source groups run issues and pull requests on an independent service. Packages and releases can place artefacts near the source when retention is governed carefully.

Gitea is not a complete secure delivery chain without additional controls. Organisations may still need dedicated vulnerability scanning, artefact signing, runner isolation, secrets management, deployment approvals, audit retention, and monitoring appropriate to their risk profile.

Self-hosting Gitea: requirements and cost

Gitea demand rises with repository count and size, clone or push traffic, code search, pull requests, issues, users, packages, releases, attachments, and automation metadata. Gitea is deployed without a PostgreSQL or MariaDB service in this template. Repository and package usage still warrants monitoring even though the mapping does not flag Gitea as storage-driven.

On AvaHost, Gitea uses Plan 1 at €2. The hosted Gitea package includes one-click deployment, a custom domain with automated HTTPS, automatic application updates, and scheduled backups. The package includes the Gitea web application, not Actions runners, build workers, deployment targets, application email, external identity registrations, code scanning, secret scanning, artefact signing, or managed source mirrors. Keep independent copies of critical repositories and apply least-privilege permissions to users and automation.