GitHub Alternatives (Free, Paid, Self-Hosted)

The trending news of yesterday was the acquisition of GitHub (the world’s leading software development platform) by Microsoft. This is a great deal for Microsoft which might put it in the position it was about 10 years ago in the software market. But a lot of open-source fans are unhappy with this.

A couple of years ago Microsoft was anti-open-source.

“Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer. I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.” - Jim Allchin (Former Windows chief), 2001

“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” - Steve Ballmer (Former CEO)

However, in recent years Microsoft has tried hard to catch up with the open-source world. They are promoting themselves as a supporter of open-source. They have open-sourced some of their projects and also joined The Linux Foundation as a platinum member.

Nobody knows whether they are doing this because they accepted that open-source is good or they are just trying to stay in the business by getting the attention of open-source users. Surely there are trust issues. Some GitHub users have already started looking for alternatives.

Below is a list of some popular services similar to GitHub:

1. GitLab

Most of the users on Social Media seem to be choosing GitLab as a replacement for GitHub.

Features:

• Issue board, Issue tracker (with due dates)
• Built-in CI/CD
• Unlimited private repositories
• Faster file search
• Cherry pick changes
• File locking
• Web IDE
• Wiki for project
• Ad free
• Code review and comments are supported in pull requests
• Static/Dynamic Application Security Testing, Docker container scanning
• Smart Mirroring for faster clone, fetch, pull (Premium)
• Host static websites

2. BitBucket

An Atlassian product which is the most popular alternative to GitHub.

Features:

• Unlimited private repositories
• JIRA integration
• 2 factor authentication
• LFS support
• Source code search
• Wiki for project
• Issue tracker
• Ad free
• Code review and comments are supported in pull requests
• BitBucket cloud for hosting static websites (similar to GitHub pages)
• Smart Mirroring for faster clone, fetch, pull (Premium)

Pricing:

Bitbucket Data Center vs GitHub Enterprise

3. Gitea

A lightweight GitHub clone (forked from GoGs) written in Go lang.

Features:

• GitHub clone
• Runs on Windows, Mac and Linux
• Lightweight (Even supports Raspberry Pi)
• Install from binary
• Ship with docker, vagrant or as a package
• Repo viewer
• Issue tracker
• Wiki
• API support
• Help (Support Forum and Chat)

4. SourceForge

One of the oldest (since 1999) to offer free services to open source projects.

Features:

• Issue tracking
• Code hosting
• Mirroing
• Wiki
• Mailing lists
• Support forums
• User reviews on projects
• Micro-blog for project
• Unlimited bandwidth
• Download statistics
• Tool to import GitHub projects

5. Launchpad

A Canonical product, which is quite famous for hosting Ubuntu projects.

Features:

• Issue tracking
• Code hosting (supports both Git and Bazaar)
• Code reviews
• Build and host Ubuntu projects
• Mailing lists
• Translations
• FAQs
• Specification tracking

6. Cloud Source Repositories (Paid)

A Google product which is a part of Google Cloud.

Features:

• Connect your repo from BitBucket or GitHub
• Source code browser
• Debug and error reporting tools
• Stable and easily scalable infrastructure
• CI through Container Builder
• Preinstalled tools (Programming languages, Cloud shell, and Shell Editor)
• Faster deployment through App Engine
• Deployment through custom triggers (HTTP, Pub/Sub etc.)

Pricing:

7. AWS CodeCommit (Paid)

An Amazon product which is similar to Cloud Source Repo, if you already have an AWS account you get it for free (Maximum 5 users allowed per month).

Features:

• Hosted on AWS
• Encrypted repositories
• Code review and comments are supported in pull requests
• Scalable
• No limit on size or type of data
• Easy migration from other services

Pricing:

8. Phabricator (Self-hosted)

Features:

• Source code hosting
• Git, Mercurial, SVN support
• Code review and auditing
• Wiki
• Issue tracker
• Workboard
• Chat channel
• Command line tools (lint, unit-tests)
• API support

Pricing:

9. GitBucket (Self-hosted)

A git platform on JVM.

Features:

• Powered with Scala
• Highly scalable
• GitHub API compatible
• Repo viewer
• Issue tracker
• Wiki
• Plugin support

10. GoGs (Self-hosted)

An easy to install and lightweight GitHub clone written in Go.

Features:

• GitHub clone
• Install from binary
• Ship with docker, vagrant or as a package
• Cross platform support
• Lightweight (runs on Raspberry Pi)
• Repo viewer
• Issue tracker
• Wiki

11. GitPrep (Self-hosted)

A GitHub clone written in Perl.

Features:

• GitHub clone
• Portable
• Issue tracker
• CGI support
• Built-in web server
• SSL Support
• Public key auth support

12. Allura (Self-hosted)

A product from Apache. Sourceforge runs on Allura.

Features:

• Code repo
• Supports Git, Mercurial, SVN
• Issue tracker
• Discussion forums
• Wiki
• Mailing lists