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Gitea vs GitHub

GitHub scores higher on the AgentReady, 55/100 against 51/100. They differ on 12 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.

GitHub. GitHub is a platform where developers, agents, and code come together for collaboration.

Where Gitea is ahead

Gitea passes authentication documented and pricing understandable, and GitHub does not. That is understand, whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it.

It also holds adopt: self-service signup and free trial or free allowance. GitHub misses those.

And on operate, agent compatibility verified. GitHub misses it.

Where GitHub is ahead

GitHub passes search discoverable, clear canonical domain, llms.txt published and llms-full.txt / full agent docs, 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: agent-compatible signup flow. Gitea misses it.

And on operate, structured, predictable output and rate-limit behavior predictable. Gitea misses those.

What neither does

Both fail 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, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support. 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. GitHub leads 93 to 60. Gitea misses search discoverable, clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, machine-readable metadata; GitHub misses machine-readable metadata.

Understand. Gitea leads 31 to 15. Gitea misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; GitHub misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Gitea leads 60 to 52. Gitea misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; GitHub misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart.

Operate. GitHub leads 59 to 53. Gitea misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable; GitHub misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

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

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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