An honest look at Gisia next to Gitea, Forgejo, and GitLab CE. Each of these is a great tool — they just make different trade-offs.
| Gisia | Gitea | Forgejo | GitLab CE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI agent skill files | ✅ Every project serves skill.md for agents |
— | — | — |
| Git hosting (SSH & HTTPS) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in CI/CD | ✅ .gitlab-ci.yml compatible pipelines + runners |
✅ Gitea Actions (GitHub Actions syntax) | ✅ Forgejo Actions | ✅ .gitlab-ci.yml, mature & full-featured |
| Issues & boards | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Epics | ✅ Included | — | — | Paid tiers only |
| Merge / pull requests | ✅ Inline diffs, review comments | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Webhooks & protected branches | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Package registry | Not yet | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Wiki | Not yet | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Stack | Rails 8 | Go | Go | Rails |
| Resource footprint | Light — a small VPS is enough | Very light | Very light | Heavy — 4 GB+ RAM recommended |
| Setup | One Docker Compose file | Single binary or Docker | Single binary or Docker | Omnibus or Docker, more moving parts |
| Maturity | Beta, in active development | Mature | Mature | Very mature |
| License | AGPLv3 | MIT | GPLv3+ | MIT (open core) |
| Designed for | Individuals & small teams working with AI agents | Individuals & teams | Communities valuing independence | Larger teams & enterprises |
Comparison reflects publicly documented features as of July 2026. Gitea, Forgejo, and GitLab are trademarks of their respective owners; Gisia is not affiliated with any of them. Spotted an error? Open an issue.
You want the most battle-tested lightweight forge with a large community, package registries, and years of production hardening — and you don't need epics or AI agent integration built in. Note that neither has built-in support for .gitlab-ci.yml pipelines.
You're an individual or small team that wants Git, CI/CD, issues, and epics on a small server — and you want your AI agents to operate the whole thing through plain-Markdown skill files. Your .gitlab-ci.yml pipelines work as-is.
You need the deepest feature set — registries, pages, advanced CI — and have the RAM and patience to run it. Note that epics and many planning features sit behind paid tiers.