Self-hosting Git stopped being a compromise years ago.
Updated 2026-10-03 · 6 options compared
The short answer
Gitea for almost everyone. It starts in seconds, runs on a small VPS, and covers issues, pull requests, packages, CI and a web editor without demanding a database cluster. Only reach for something heavier if you specifically need what that weight buys.
Self-hosting Git stopped being a compromise years ago. The reason to do it is not cost — hosted Git is cheap or free — but that your code and your issue history are the record of everything you have built, and the day a provider changes its pricing, its terms, or its ownership is not a day you want to be migrating under pressure. This list is ranked on operational burden per unit of capability, because that ratio is what decides whether you are still running it in two years.
| # | Tool | License | Setup | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gitea | MIT | Beginner | Almost everyone who wants their own Git host without running a platform team. |
| 2 | Gogs | MIT | Beginner | The smallest possible footprint on modest or old hardware. |
| 3 | Dokku | MIT | Intermediate | Small teams who want push-to-deploy on a single server. |
| 4 | Coolify | Apache-2.0 | Intermediate | Managing many services across one or more servers from a UI. |
| 5 | Dokploy | Apache-2.0 | Intermediate | A lighter, quickly-configured alternative to Coolify. |
| 6 | Appwrite | BSD-3-Clause | Intermediate | Providing a backend for apps without renting a BaaS. |
There are two separate decisions here and people conflate them. The first is where the repository lives — the Git server. The second is how changes reach production — the deployment tooling. Gitea and Gogs answer the first; Dokku, Coolify and Dokploy answer the second. Most self-hosters pair a lightweight Git server with one of the deploy tools rather than running a single monolith that does both. That composition is cheaper to run and much easier to reason about when something breaks at midnight.
Best for: Almost everyone who wants their own Git host without running a platform team.
The right default. It runs comfortably on a small VPS, starts in under a second, and packages an unexpectedly complete feature set — issues, pull requests, a wiki, package registries, CI, and a built-in editor for quick fixes — into a single binary. The community is large, the release cadence is steady, and the operational burden is genuinely small.
Replaces: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket
Best for: The smallest possible footprint on modest or old hardware.
Gitea's ancestor and still the most minimal option here — a single binary, very low resource use, and deliberately few features. It is the right choice for an old, small machine or for someone who wants a repository browser and nothing else. Development is slower than Gitea's, which is the honest cost of its simplicity.
Replaces: GitHub, Gitea, GitLab
Best for: Small teams who want push-to-deploy on a single server.
Answers the other half of the question: getting code from a push to a running application. A single server, `git push dokku main`, and it builds and deploys — the Heroku workflow, self-hosted, with almost no moving parts. It is the lightest deploy tool in this list and the easiest to operate on one machine.
Replaces: Heroku, Railway, Fly.io
Best for: Managing many services across one or more servers from a UI.
The same idea with a real interface and more primitives: applications, databases, backups, environment variables and multi-server targets, all managed from a web UI. It is the closest open-source experience to a modern hosted platform, and it turns a single VPS into something that feels like a small PaaS.
Replaces: Vercel, Heroku, Netlify
Best for: A lighter, quickly-configured alternative to Coolify.
A more recent entrant in the same space, with a noticeably simpler setup path and a strong focus on the common case: containers, compose stacks, preview environments and databases with one-click provisioning. Worth considering alongside Coolify — they overlap heavily and the better choice comes down to which interface suits you.
Replaces: Vercel, Heroku, Railway
Best for: Providing a backend for apps without renting a BaaS.
Not a Git host but the piece that usually follows it: authentication, database, storage and functions as a self-hosted backend, so a front-end project does not need a hosted BaaS. Included because "where does my code live" and "what does it talk to" get decided together.
Replaces: Firebase, Supabase, AWS Amplify