Gitea - Git with a cup of tea! Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD
From my personal experience running GitLab and Forgejo (Gitea Drop-In replacement/Fork):
Gitea/Forgejo is easier to get running
UI is less bloated/faster
GitLab redesigned their UI and imo it’s shit now
No features locked behind a “Pro” Version (Pull or Bidirectional mirrors are for example unavailable on GitLab self-hosted unless you shell out for premium)
Gitea Actions is a lot more intuitive than GitLab CI, this is likely personal preference but it’s still an important factor
Definitely agree on the UI part. The UI of Gitea/Forgejo is very intuitive and easy to understand. When you go to a repository you just have the tabs to go to issues etc. and you can always see those at the top. The first time I used GitLab, I found it very unintuitive. There were 2 sidebars on the left side with their respective buttons right on top of each other. Issues and stuff are also in the sidebar, so I couldn’t find them immediately.
How does it distinguish itself from GitLab?
IME it’s way easier to self-host
From my personal experience running GitLab and Forgejo (Gitea Drop-In replacement/Fork):
Definitely agree on the UI part. The UI of Gitea/Forgejo is very intuitive and easy to understand. When you go to a repository you just have the tabs to go to issues etc. and you can always see those at the top. The first time I used GitLab, I found it very unintuitive. There were 2 sidebars on the left side with their respective buttons right on top of each other. Issues and stuff are also in the sidebar, so I couldn’t find them immediately.