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Forgejo vs Gitea

Gitea scores higher on the AgentReady, 51/100 against 45/100. They differ on 5 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Forgejo. Forgejo is a self-hosted lightweight software forge.

Gitea. A self-hosted DevOps platform and all-in-one software development service that includes Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry, and CI/CD.

Where Forgejo is ahead

Forgejo passes search discoverable and clear canonical domain, and Gitea does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

Where Gitea is ahead

Gitea passes self-service signup and official typescript sdk, and Forgejo does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.

It also holds operate: agent compatibility verified. Forgejo misses it.

What neither does

Both fail llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Forgejo leads 80 to 60. Forgejo misses llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata; Gitea misses search discoverable, clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata.

Understand. Both sit at 31/100 here. Forgejo misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Gitea misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Gitea leads 60 to 35. Forgejo misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official typescript sdk; Gitea misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart.

Operate. Gitea leads 53 to 35. Forgejo misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Gitea misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.

Pricing

Forgejo does not publish a machine-readable starting price and has a free tier. Gitea starts at $9.5/user/month and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Gitea clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Forgejo and Gitea. Alternatives to each: Forgejo, Gitea.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["forgejo", "gitea"]}