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Gitea vs GitLab (2026): requirements, licence and pricing

Gitea and GitLab are both Git hosts you can run yourself. GitLab publishes an 8 vCPU and 16 GB baseline [S3]. Gitea's docs say "2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM is typically sufficient for small teams/projects" [S13], and Gitea publishes no disk figure. We took every figure on this page from the vendors' own pages on 28 Oct 2026.

Gitea vs GitLab at a glance

Gitea and GitLab compared, from the vendors' own pages and the GitHub API
GiteaGitLab
LicenceMIT [S2]MIT outside ee/ and jh/, open core [S4]
Latest releasev28.2.0, 19 Oct 2026 [S2]v19.5.1, 21 Oct 2026, from mirror tags [S5]
CPU, RAM and disk"2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM is typically sufficient for small teams/projects"; disk not published [S13]8 vCPU and 16 GB baseline [S3]
DatabasePostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite (builtin) or MSSQL [S6]PostgreSQL, bundled in the Linux package [S7]
InstallBinary, package, source, Docker, Kubernetes [S8]Linux package, Helm, Operator, Docker, source [S7]
Paid plan$9.5 per user/month with a 1 year commitment (list $19) [S9]"$ 29 per user/month, billed annually" [S10]

Requirements compared

GitLab sets "8 vCPU is the baseline" and "16 GB is the baseline" for one node [S3]. It can run "with at least 8 GB of memory" when memory is tight [S3]. Gitea's docs say "2 CPU cores and 1GB RAM is typically sufficient for small teams/projects" [S13]. Only the disk figure is unpublished.

When to choose each

Gitea suits you when you want a small server and SQLite is enough [S1][S6].
GitLab suits you when you want PostgreSQL, Redis and Sidekiq bundled in one package and have 16 GB to spare [S3][S7]. Use the CE build for open source only code [S11].

Self-host guides

Sources (fetched 28 Oct 2026 unless a date is given)