Forgejo / Gitea Actions vs GitHub self-hosted runners
Both are alternatives to GitHub Actions. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as GitHub self-hosted runners vs Forgejo / Gitea Actions — same comparison, one verdict.
Forgejo / Gitea Actions
Actions-compatible CI inside a self-hosted forge.
Forgejo and Gitea both ship a CI runner that speaks the GitHub Actions workflow format, so a large share of existing `.github/workflows` files run unchanged — including many marketplace actions, which are just repositories. That compatibility is the point: it is the only option here where migration can be a copy rather than a rewrite. The trade is that you are adopting a whole forge, not just a build system, so it suits teams already considering moving off GitHub entirely rather than teams that only want cheaper minutes.
GitHub self-hosted runners
Keep the workflows, move the minutes onto your own machine.
Not a replacement for Actions but the cheapest fix for its bill: register your own machine as a runner and change one line — `runs-on: self-hosted`. The workflows, the marketplace actions, the pull-request integration and the secrets all stay exactly as they are, and the per-minute charge stops. It is the highest-leverage move in this comparison for most teams. Two cautions. Self-hosted runners are not recommended for public repositories, because a pull request from anyone can execute code on your hardware. And the free status of these minutes is a policy, not a guarantee: GitHub announced a $0.002/min fee on them for March 2026 and postponed it indefinitely after the reaction, which tells you both that the risk is real and that pushing back worked.
Side by side
| Forgejo / Gitea Actions | GitHub self-hosted runners | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 91 | 45 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | No |
| License | MIT (Gitea) / GPL-3.0 (Forgejo) | Proprietary (runner agent is MIT; the service is GitHub's) |
| Pricing | Free and open source; self-hosted on your own hardware. | No per-minute charge as of 2026-07-30 — you pay only for the machine. The announced platform fee remains postponed, not cancelled. |
Forgejo / Gitea Actions edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Forgejo / Gitea Actions
Strengths
- +Workflow syntax is Actions-compatible — existing YAML often runs as-is
- +Many GitHub marketplace actions work because they are just repos
- +Comes with the git host, issues and packages in one binary
- +Forgejo is GPL-3.0 and community-governed under Codeberg
Trade-offs
- −Adopting it sensibly means moving your repositories too
- −Compatibility is high but not total — GitHub-specific contexts break
- −Smaller runner ecosystem; scaling out is manual work
- −Two similar projects with a contentious shared history to understand
GitHub self-hosted runners
Strengths
- +Zero migration: one line of YAML, everything else unchanged
- +Removes the minute bill immediately, including for large runners
- +Lets you use hardware GitHub does not offer — GPUs, ARM, big disks
- +Keeps the marketplace ecosystem and PR integration intact
Trade-offs
- −You are still entirely inside GitHub's pricing decisions — the fee was deferred, not withdrawn
- −Unsafe on public repositories: forked PRs would run on your machine
- −You own patching, isolation and cleanup between jobs
- −No sovereignty gain — this is a cost fix, not an independence fix
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-07-30. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.