Gitea vs GitLab: Why Small Teams Are Choosing a 170MB Binary Over a 4GB Monolith

GitLab is a fantastic platform. It's also a 4GB monolith that wants 8-16GB of RAM just to sit there and wait for your five-person team to push code. For a lot of teams, that's like renting a stadium to play pickup basketball.

Gitea is the opposite bet. A single Go binary, ~170MB on disk, running comfortably on 200MB of RAM. It has 53,000+ GitHub stars, ships with built-in CI/CD that's compatible with GitHub Actions workflows, and it handles everything a small team actually needs from a Git server.

Here's why it's worth a serious look if you're under 25 engineers.

What You Get With Each

GitLab is a complete DevOps lifecycle platform. Source control, CI/CD, container registry, security scanning (SAST, DAST), project management with epics and roadmaps, Kubernetes integration, monitoring. It's genuinely impressive. But all of that runs in a single Ruby on Rails application backed by PostgreSQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Puma, and several other services. That's where the resource appetite comes from.

Gitea is a Git forge. Repositories, issues, pull requests, wikis, package registry, project boards, and since v1.19, Gitea Actions for CI/CD. It's written in Go, compiles to a single binary, and uses SQLite by default (PostgreSQL and MySQL are also supported). No separate services to manage, no background workers eating your memory.

The Numbers That Matter

CI/CD: The Gap That Closed

The biggest argument against Gitea used to be "no built-in CI/CD." That changed with Gitea Actions.

Gitea Actions is compatible with GitHub Actions workflow syntax. If you have existing .github/workflows/*.yml files, they'll run on Gitea with minimal changes. The runner (act_runner) is a standalone Go binary that connects to your Gitea instance and executes jobs in Docker containers.

Here's what a basic CI pipeline looks like:

# .gitea/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '20'
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

If that looks exactly like a GitHub Actions workflow, that's the point. Most actions from the GitHub Marketplace work on Gitea without modification. You can even use GITHUB_ prefixed environment variables for compatibility, though Gitea recommends GITEA_ where possible.

Setting up the runner takes about two minutes:

# Register the runner
./act_runner register \
  --instance https://your-gitea.example.com \
  --token YOUR_RUNNER_TOKEN

# Start it
./act_runner daemon

Is it as powerful as GitLab CI? No. GitLab CI has deeper integration with its own ecosystem: merge train pipelines, dynamic child pipelines, review apps, built-in SAST/DAST scanning. If you need those features, GitLab is the right call. But if you need "run tests on push and deploy on merge," Gitea Actions does that cleanly.

Deployment: One Command vs. A Weekend

Here's a minimal Gitea deployment with Docker Compose:

# docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
  gitea:
    image: gitea/gitea:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
      - "2222:22"
    volumes:
      - ./gitea-data:/data
    environment:
      - GITEA__database__DB_TYPE=sqlite3
    restart: always

That's it. One container, one volume, SQLite. docker compose up -d and you're running. The web installer walks you through the rest.

GitLab's docker-compose.yml typically includes the GitLab container itself (which bundles PostgreSQL, Redis, and several internal services), plus external runner containers for CI. The official recommendation for self-hosting is their Omnibus package, which manages these components but still demands 8GB+ of RAM.

When GitLab Is Still the Right Call

This isn't a "GitLab is bad" article. GitLab wins when:

• You need built-in security scanning. SAST, DAST, dependency scanning, secret detection, container scanning. This is genuinely hard to replicate with Actions plugins.
• You have 50+ engineers. GitLab's project management features (epics, roadmaps, value stream analytics) become genuinely useful at scale.
• You want one platform for everything. If the trade-off of higher resource usage gives you fewer tools to manage, that's a legitimate choice.
• Compliance requirements. GitLab's audit logging and approval workflows are enterprise-grade.

When Gitea Is the Smarter Choice

Gitea wins when:

• You're under 25 engineers. You don't need epics and roadmaps. You need repos, PRs, and CI.
• Resources are limited. Running on a $5/month VPS, a Raspberry Pi, or a homelab.
• You already use GitHub Actions. Your workflows transfer over with almost no changes.
• You want simplicity. One binary, one config file, minimal maintenance.
• You're migrating from GitHub. Gitea has a built-in migration tool that imports repos, issues, PRs, labels, and milestones directly from GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.

Deploy Either One on Elestio

If you don't want to manage the infrastructure yourself:

• Deploy Gitea on Elestio - starts at $16/month (2 CPU / 4 GB RAM, more than enough)
• Deploy GitLab on Elestio - starts at $29/month (4 CPU / 8 GB RAM, minimum for comfortable operation)

Both include automated backups, SSL certificates, monitoring, and OS updates. The difference in starting price reflects the difference in resource requirements. Gitea simply needs less to do its job.

The Bottom Line

GitLab is a platform. Gitea is a tool. Platforms are powerful but heavy. Tools are focused and fast. If your team has outgrown GitHub's free tier but doesn't need a full DevOps lifecycle platform, Gitea gives you everything that matters at a fraction of the resources.

Try deploying both. You'll know within an hour which one fits your team.

Thanks for reading. See you in the next one.