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Gitea vs GitLab

Gitea scores higher on the AgentReady, 51/100 against 50/100. They differ on 11 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

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.

GitLab. Your intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.

Where Gitea is ahead

Gitea passes mcp discoverable, and GitLab does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: authentication documented. GitLab misses it.

And on adopt, cli available and mcp integration available. GitLab misses those.

Finally, on operate, agent compatibility verified. GitLab misses it.

Where GitLab is ahead

GitLab passes search discoverable, clear canonical domain, llms.txt published and machine-readable metadata, and Gitea does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: no mandatory sales call and agent-compatible signup flow. Gitea misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. GitLab leads 80 to 60. Gitea misses search discoverable, clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata; GitLab misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Gitea leads 31 to 23. Gitea misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; GitLab misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Both sit at 60/100 here. Gitea misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; GitLab misses programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, cli available, mcp integration available.

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

Pricing

Gitea starts at $9.5/user/month and has a free tier. GitLab does not publish one and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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