Best GitLab Alternatives in 2025 (Including Open-Source Options)

Your sprints are humming, pull requests keep landing, and the next release is two days out—then your leadership asks whether GitLab is still the right home for your repos and CI/CD. Maybe procurement needs a different price model. Maybe you want a lighter interface, enterprise policy controls, or a fully self-hosted, open-source stack under your own roof. Whatever the driver, you’re hunting for the best GitLab alternatives that won’t disrupt delivery.

This definitive 2025 guide walks you through the landscape—hosted and self-hosted, open-source and enterprise—so you can choose with confidence. You’ll get a practical evaluation framework, a clean comparison table, detailed notes on each alternative, open-source standouts, migration tips, and where Everhour naturally supports budgets, reporting, and client billing without adding friction. We also explain a GitLab time tracking function and some GitLab project management tools that can be extremely useful for teams.

What “GitLab Alternative” Really Means

GitLab is more than code hosting. It’s a DevSecOps platform that blends:

• Source code management (SCM): repositories, branches, pull/merge requests, code review
• Planning: issues, boards, milestones/iterations, epics/roadmaps
• CI/CD: pipelines, runners, environments, deployment approvals
• Security: SAST/DAST, dependency scanning, secret detection, compliance
• Collaboration: wikis, Pages, code review, discussions, templates

So a true alternative should cover at least repos + code review + CI/CD.

Many platforms also add project management, security scanning, containers, and artifacts. You might assemble your own “best-of” toolchain (e.g., Gitea + Woodpecker CI + SonarQube + Argo CD), or pick a single vendor suite (e.g., GitHub + Actions + Advanced Security).

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How to Evaluate GitLab Alternatives

Use these categories to compare options apples-to-apples:

Hosting model ☁️

• Fully hosted (SaaS, vendor-managed)
• Self-hosted (on-prem or your cloud)
• Hybrid (SaaS core + self-hosted runners/agents)

Repository & code review 💻

• Pull/Merge requests, required reviews, CODEOWNERS, branch protection
• Inline comments, suggestions, draft PRs, templates

CI/CD depth ⚙️

• Pipeline as code (YAML), parallelization, matrix builds
• Hosted vs self-hosted runners, secrets, environments, approvals

Security & compliance 🔒

• Native scans (SAST/DAST/container), dependency/SBOM, secret detection
• Audit logs, SSO/SAML, SCIM, IP allowlists, FedRAMP/ISO claims

Project management & collaboration 📋

• Issues, boards, epics/roadmaps, wikis/docs, templates, automation rules

Ecosystem & extensibility 🔌

• Marketplace/actions/plugins, webhooks, REST/GraphQL APIs, starter kits

Pricing & scalability 💰

• User vs seat vs actions-minutes pricing; concurrency limits; storage/artifact limits
• Licensing for self-hosted or OSS projects

Community, vendor support & longevity 🤝

• Release cadence, LTS options, migration tooling, customer success, SLAs

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Clean Comparison Table

Tool	Hosting Model	CI/CD	Security/Natively Scans	PM Features	Best For
GitHub	SaaS + Enterprise Server	Actions (hosted & self-hosted runners)	Advanced Security options; Dependabot	Issues, Projects, Discussions, Wikis	Broad ecosystem, deep marketplace, AI pair-programming
Bitbucket	SaaS + Data Center	Pipelines (Docker-based), self-hosted runners	Integrates with Atlassian security & partners	Tight Jira linking, boards via Jira	Teams invested in Atlassian stack
Azure DevOps	SaaS + Server (deprecated variants exist)	Azure Pipelines (multi-cloud), self-hosted agents	Microsoft ecosystem + partner scanners	Boards, Repos, Artifacts, Test Plans	Enterprises needing end-to-end ALM
JetBrains Space	SaaS + self-hosted	Space Automation (Kotlin DSL), containers	Partner integrations	Issues, Docs, Packages, Chats	Teams using JetBrains IDEs; all-in-one hub
Gitea (open-source)	Self-hosted/SaaS via providers	Actions-compatible runners in newer builds	Integrations/third-party scanners	Issues, Projects, Wikis	Lightweight OSS Git service under your control
Forgejo (open-source)	Self-hosted/SaaS via Codeberg etc.	Actions-style CI via community runners	Integrations/third-party scanners	Issues, Projects, Wikis	Community-driven fork with transparent governance
SourceHut	SaaS + self-hosted	Builds (simple, scriptable CI)	Leans on external scanners	Tickets, mailing lists, patches	Minimalists; email-driven workflows and patch series
AWS CodeCommit (+ CodeBuild/Deploy)	Managed AWS	CodeBuild/CodePipeline	AWS security services	Basic issues via partners	Teams fully on AWS who prefer native services
Buildkite (+ your repo host)	SaaS orchestrator, self-hosted agents	Best-in-class parallelization; pipelines as code	Integrate scanners freely	Works with GitHub/GitLab/Gitea	High-scale CI/CD paired with your favorite SCM
Google Cloud (Cloud Build + GitHub/GitLab)	SaaS CI/CD	Cloud Build	GCP security integrations	PM via chosen repo host	GCP-first pipelines for teams using GitHub/GitLab

🧠 Notes: Keep an eye on each platform’s latest docs for plan limits and security capabilities; specifics change frequently.

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Detailed Look at the Best GitLab Alternatives

GitHub

❓ Why teams choose it

• Massive ecosystem: Actions, reusable workflows, templates, and the largest community of examples.
• Developer experience: Polished PR flow, CODEOWNERS, discussions, rich reviews.
• Integrated AI: GitHub Copilot assists in code and PRs; Automations & Actions marketplace accelerates setup.

👀 What to watch

• Metered usage: Actions minutes, storage, and artifacts can add up—budget for concurrency.
• Enterprise controls: Available, but ensure your plan matches SSO, SCIM, and audit needs.

🤔 Fit

Broad fit—from startups to regulated enterprises—with a deep bench of CI/CD and security integrations.

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Bitbucket

❓ Why teams choose it

• Jira synergy: If product/engineering live in Jira, Bitbucket’s PRs, branches, and issues align tightly.
• Pipelines simplicity: YAML pipelines with sensible defaults; good for Dockerized apps.

👀 What to watch

• Ecosystem: Smaller marketplace than GitHub; plan feature gates vary.
• UI preference: Some teams find it utilitarian; others love the focus.

🤔 Fit

Teams already standardized on Atlassian—Jira/Confluence + Bitbucket can be a clean stack.

Azure DevOps

❓ Why teams choose it

• End-to-end ALM: Repos, Pipelines, Boards, Artifacts, Test Plans in one product.
• Enterprise policy: Fine-grained permissions, audit controls, robust agent model.

👀 What to watch

• Complexity: Rich, but can feel heavyweight.
• Multiproject overhead: Invest in conventions and templates early.

🤔 Fit

Enterprises needing process rigor, strong approvals, and multi-cloud CI/CD via Azure Pipelines.

JetBrains Space

❓ Why teams choose it

• All-in-one hub: Git hosting, code review, CI, packages, docs, chats, and automation in Kotlin.
• IDE native feel: Tight integration with JetBrains IDEs; developer comfort is high.

👀 What to watch

• Community size: Smaller marketplace; you may build more in-house.
• CI DSL: Kotlin DSL is powerful, but new to some teams.

🤔 Fit

Product orgs committed to JetBrains tooling, seeking one coherent, developer-centric space.

Gitea (open-source, self-hosted)

❓ Why teams choose it

• Lightweight Git service: Fast, minimal, easy to run on modest infrastructure.
• Familiar UX: Issues, PRs, Projects, Wikis—without vendor lock-in.
• Cost control: Your infra, your rules; great for air-gapped environments.

👀 What to watch

• CI/CD: Rapidly improving (Actions-style workflow), but many pair with Woodpecker CI, Drone, or Jenkins.
• Security features: Rely on integrations for deep scanning.

🤔 Fit

Teams wanting an OSS, self-hosted GitLab-like without the heft; SMBs to large orgs with platform teams.

Forgejo (open-source, community-driven)

❓ Why teams choose it

• Community governance: Transparent decision-making and independence.
• Familiarity: Very similar to Gitea with a compatible feature set.
• Hosted options: Codeberg and others provide Forgejo hosting if you don’t want to self-host.

👀 What to watch

• Divergence: Feature paths may differ from Gitea; track releases closely.
• CI: Same considerations as Gitea—pair with a CI you control.

🤔 Fit

Organizations who value community stewardship and long-term OSS sustainability.

SourceHut

❓ Why teams choose it

• Minimalist and email-first: Patch-series workflow with mailing lists, tickets, and simple builds.
• Speed and clarity: No frills, very scriptable, highly UNIX-friendly.

👀 What to watch

• Culture fit: Email/patch-based dev is a learned taste in a PR-centric world.
• PM features: Intentionally limited.

🤔 Fit

Low-overhead teams, FOSS projects, and groups that prefer mailing list review over PRs.

AWS CodeCommit (+ CodeBuild/CodePipeline)

❓ Why teams choose it

• AWS-native: IAM, networking, and secrets stay inside AWS; fewer external dependencies.
• CI/CD blocks: CodeBuild and CodePipeline cover core jobs; scale with your AWS account.

👀 What to watch

• UX: Utilitarian compared to GitHub/GitLab; smaller community of examples.
• Vendor lock-in: Great if you’re all-in on AWS; less ideal for multi-cloud.

🤔 Fit

Teams already deeply invested in AWS, seeking least-moving-parts governance.

Buildkite (paired with your repo host)

❓ Why teams choose it

• CI/CD at scale: Self-hosted agents + SaaS control plane; excellent parallelism and visibility.
• Freedom: Keep repos in GitHub, GitLab, or Gitea; Buildkite handles the hard CI bits.

👀 What to watch

• Another bill, another UI: You’ll still choose and pay for SCM separately.
• Agent ops: You run the agents—great flexibility with a bit of ops work.

🤔 Fit

Teams pushing heavy pipelines (monorepos, mobile builds) who want the fastest green build loop.

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Choosing Between Hosted, Self-Hosted, and Open-Source

Hosted (SaaS) ☁️

• ✅ Pros: Fast start, minimal ops, managed security patches, generous features
• ⚠️ Cons: Usage-based pricing, vendor limits, data residency issues
• 🎯 Best for: Startups → enterprises wanting speed and lower TCO

Self-hosted 🏗️

• ✅ Pros: Maximum control, air-gapped operation, custom integrations, predictable costs at scale
• ⚠️ Cons: You own uptime, patches, performance; requires platform expertise
• 🎯 Best for: Regulated industries, large orgs, SRE-capable teams

Open-source standouts 🐧

• Gitea: Lightweight, popular, easy to run. Pair with Woodpecker CI or Drone.
• Forgejo: Community-governed fork with strong momentum; compatible features.
• SourceHut: Minimalist tools (git hosting, builds, mailing lists) for patch-based workflows.

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A Practical Migration Plan

Phase 1: Decide & design 📝

• 🔧 Choose hosting model and target platform(s)
• 🗺️ Map features: repos, PRs/MRs, CI/CD, secrets, protections
• 🔗 Inventory integrations: tracker, chat, registry, scanners
• 📂 Create a pilot repo & reference pipeline with protections

Phase 2: Parallel setup ⚙️

• 🖥️ Stand up target SCM/CI; configure runners or agents
• 📑 Recreate policies: CODEOWNERS, reviewers, checks
• 🔬 Port a small service; validate pipeline; document steps

Phase 3: Data migration 📦

• 📜 Migrate repos with history; preserve tags & notes
• 👥 Map users/groups; verify permissions
• 📊 Move or freeze issues/boards at milestone

Phase 4: Cutover 🔄

• 🚫 Freeze merges on old host; final push to new
• 🔑 Update remotes, secrets, environment variables
• 📈 Monitor builds & deployments for one sprint

Phase 5: Stabilize & optimize ✅

• ⏱️ Measure pipeline time, caching, flakiness
• 👀 Review WIP, PR size, review SLAs
• 🗃️ Decommission old runners; archive legacy system

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Security & Compliance Must-Haves

• 🔑 SSO/SAML with SCIM: Centralized identity and user provisioning.
• 🛡️ Granular roles & approvals: Protected branches, environment approvals, and role-based access.
• ✍️ Signed commits & reviews: Enforce code reviews for sensitive paths.
• 🔍 Secret scanning & alerts: Detect leaked secrets and monitor dependencies (native or third-party).
• 📜 Audit trails: Retain logs per your compliance policy.
• 💾 Backups & restores: Test your recovery process regularly.

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Where Everhour Fits in Your New Toolchain

Source control and CI/CD ship your product—but budgets, billing, and capacity live in time and cost. Everhour’s time tracker layers a clean, human-friendly time tracking and reporting workflow that complements your chosen GitLab alternative (or GitLab itself, via its GitLab time tracking integration) without adding busywork.

Natural touchpoints 🔗

• 📝 Issue templates: Add “Estimate (hours)” and “Billable?” fields in your tracker (GitHub Issues/Projects, Jira, ClickUp).
• ⏱️ Real-time tracking: Use Everhour timers or quick entry while working on issues or PRs; no need to switch context.

• 📊 Sprint and epic rollups: Report time spent by label (feature/bug/research), by milestone/sprint, or by epic/initiative—perfect for reviews.
• 💼 Client invoices: Build invoices directly from billable time, with descriptions pulled from issue titles or PR bodies.

• 🚦 Budget guardrails: Set project or retainer budgets and get alerts as you approach thresholds.
• 📈 Capacity planning: Compare historical Everhour actuals to upcoming estimates to set a realistic sprint scope.

Two common patterns 🔄

• GitHub/Bitbucket + Everhour: Keep planning in Issues/Projects or Jira; track time in Everhour; close the loop with shareable reports.
• Gitea/Forgejo + PM tool + Everhour: Use a lightweight Git host and a dedicated PM app Everhour supports (e.g., Asana, ClickUp, Trello, Jira) for best-in-class scheduling, then let Everhour handle estimates vs actuals and invoicing.

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Tips & Best Practices for a Smooth Switch

• 📌 Decide your “source of truth” for planning. If your new SCM is light on PM, pick a supported PM tool for issues/roadmaps and keep it consistent.
• 🏷️ Standardize labels and templates. Prefixes like type:, area:, priority: make filters effortless.
• ✂️ Keep PRs/MRs small. Your new code review tool will shine with smaller, faster reviews.
• ⚡ Stabilize CI early. Cache dependencies, parallelize jobs, and fail fast on tests.
• 🛡️ Enforce policies from day one. CODEOWNERS, required checks, and protected branches prevent drift.
• ⏱️ Time box the migration. Avoid dragging parallel systems for months; set a hard date and execute.
• 💰 Bring finance along. Show how Everhour ties estimates and actuals to sprints and epics so reporting doesn’t regress.
• 📖 Document, don’t DM. Put your new developer handbook in the repo/wiki; include a “New Project Template.”

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FAQ: Best GitLab Alternatives

Which GitLab alternative feels most similar?

Gitea and Forgejo (self-hosted) offer a familiar UI for repos, PRs, issues, and wikis—without the weight. For hosted, GitHub is the closest overall substitute with a larger marketplace.

What’s the best open-source GitLab alternative?

For most teams: Gitea or Forgejo. Both are OSS, actively developed, and lightweight. Pair with Woodpecker CI or Drone to round out CI/CD.

We use GitLab for everything—issues, epics, CI, security. Can one tool replace all of it?

Yes and no. GitHub with Actions and optional Advanced Security comes closest in a single vendor. Azure DevOps is another end-to-end suite. But many teams prefer a modular stack (e.g., Gitea + Buildkite + SonarQube + Argo CD) for flexibility.

Will we lose velocity during migration?

Expect a short dip as pipelines and permissions settle. Minimize it by piloting one repo, codifying templates/policies, and cutting over quickly with strong monitoring.

Does Everhour integrate with all these platforms?

Everhour integrates natively with major PM tools (e.g., Asana, Jira, Trello, ClickUp, Basecamp, GitHub). If you choose an SCM without native time tracking, keep your planning in a supported PM tool and track time against those tasks while linking back to your repo/PRs.

What about cost—SaaS vs self-hosted?

SaaS looks cheaper up front but can add usage fees (minutes, storage, concurrency). Self-hosted reduces per-user fees but requires ops time. Model both over 12–36 months, including support, security, and developer time saved.

How do we handle secrets and compliance after we move?

Use your new platform’s secret store or a dedicated vault, restrict production environments, require signed commits for sensitive code paths, and keep audit logs per policy. Run a tabletop incident to verify access boundaries.

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✅ Decision Tree

• 🛒 Need the largest marketplace, strong AI assist, and sleek PRs → GitHub
• 📚 All-in on Atlassian (Jira/Confluence) → Bitbucket
• 🏢 Enterprise ALM, deep policy control, multi-cloud agents → Azure DevOps
• 💻 OSS, self-hosted, lightweight Git service → Gitea or Forgejo (+ your CI)
• ✉️ Email/patch series and minimal web UI → SourceHut
• ☁️ AWS-native governance and IAM → CodeCommit + CodeBuild/CodePipeline
• ⚡ Keep your SCM, upgrade your CI at scale → Buildkite

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Clean Pricing & Planning Table

Platform	Pricing Model / Themes	CI/CD Concurrency	Who Should Trial First
GitHub	Per seat + usage (Actions/storage)	Hosted & self-hosted runners	Teams wanting deep ecosystem and polish
Bitbucket	Per seat; Pipelines minutes	Hosted & self-hosted runners	Jira-heavy orgs
Azure DevOps	Per user + parallel jobs/artifacts	Hosted & self-hosted agents	Enterprises with strict policy/compliance
JetBrains Space	Per user (SaaS/self-hosted)	Containerized jobs	JetBrains IDE shops
Gitea / Forgejo	Free OSS (+ your infra)	Pair with Drone/Woodpecker	Platform teams comfortable self-hosting
SourceHut	Low per-user; simple builds	Scriptable CI	Minimalist/open-source projects
AWS CodeCommit	AWS usage model	CodeBuild/CodePipeline concurrency	AWS-first engineering orgs
Buildkite	Per pipeline/agent	Your agents, massive parallelization	High-scale CI/CD demand

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Final Thoughts

There’s no single “best” GitLab alternative—choose based on culture, compliance, budget, and developer experience. Gitea or Forgejo suit teams valuing community control; GitHub offers a rich marketplace and smooth PRs; Azure DevOps delivers enterprise policy depth.

Close the loop with Everhour: turn estimates into actuals, roll time up by epic and sprint, and generate clean reports and invoices without spreadsheets. This improves predictability, protects margins, and gives stakeholders clarity.

Shortlist two platforms, run a two-week pilot, wire up pipelines and policies, and share an Everhour sprint report. If it saves developers time and gives finance visibility, you’ve found your winner.

🔎 Check out what real users have to say about Everhour:

“I like the great visualization tools including Gantt charts which make it easy to represent information and invoicing.” [Njeru, Capterra]

“I like the flexibility and scalability potential of the tool which allows us to track many projects we manage all at once.” [Oyaro, Capterra]

“The setup is easy. The interface is really intuitive. I love that it integrates with other systems seamlessly and any calls to support have been answered promptly.” [Chris, Capterra]

We also suggest you go through our elaborate GitLab tutorial and GitLab time tracking report, where we explain the GitLab basics.