Best Self-Hosted Git Platforms for Small Teams Under $50/Month

Every small team faces the same fork in the road: sign up for yet another SaaS monthly bill, or take control with a self-hosted Git server. The promise of self-hosting is autonomy and predictable costs. The reality? A lot of teams fall into what we call the RAM trap — picking a platform so heavy that the server to run it costs more than the software ever would.

We've spent weeks benchmarking the leading self-hosted options to find the things actually worth buying for teams of 10 or fewer, keeping the total monthly infrastructure tab under $50.

The Lightweight King: Gitea / Forgejo

If your team is under 10 people and you just need a fast, GitHub-shaped experience without the bloat, Gitea (and its hard fork Forgejo) is the answer. These platforms are written in Go and are absurdly efficient. At idle, Gitea sips around 150 MB of RAM.1 That's not a typo — it's roughly 1/25th of what GitLab requires.

You can run Gitea on a $5–$10/month VPS alongside other services. It includes pull requests, issue tracking, a built-in wiki, and a lightweight CI/CD system via Actions. It won't replace GitLab's full DevOps pipeline, but for most small teams, it's more than enough — and the cost savings are dramatic.

> Our pick: Gitea or Forgejo for any team under 10 people. Run it on a $10/month VM and you're done.

The Powerhouse: GitLab Self-Managed (Community Edition)

GitLab CE is the gold standard for teams that need everything under one roof: source control, CI/CD pipelines, a container registry, security scanning, and deep project management. It's free software, and the feature set is genuinely impressive.

But here's the catch — and it's a big one. GitLab CE wants 4 GB of RAM minimum to run comfortably.1 On a budget cloud provider, a VM with 4 GB RAM typically runs $20–$35/month. Add storage for your container registry and CI artifacts, and you can easily hit $50/month before you've even installed a single dependency.

That's the RAM trap: GitLab's price tag is $0, but its infrastructure cost can exceed the entire budget of a lean startup. If you genuinely need integrated CI/CD and a registry, it's worth it. If you don't, you're paying for power you'll never use.

> Consider GitLab CE if: your team runs multiple pipelines daily, needs a built-in container registry, or wants to avoid stitching together separate tools.

The Infrastructure Play: Aleph Cloud

Here's where things get interesting. Aleph Cloud is a decentralized cloud platform that lets you host applications — including self-hosted Git servers — on a peer-to-peer network rather than a centralized provider like AWS or DigitalOcean.

For small teams, Aleph Cloud offers a compelling middle path. You can deploy a lightweight Gitea instance on Aleph's decentralized infrastructure, often at lower costs than traditional VPS providers, with the added benefit of censorship resistance and no single point of failure. It's particularly well-suited for teams that already value decentralization or want to avoid vendor lock-in.

> Best for: Teams already exploring Web3 infrastructure, or anyone who wants to host Gitea/Forgejo on a decentralized, cost-effective platform.

The Bottom Line

For most small teams under $50/month, the winning formula is Gitea or Forgejo on a cheap VPS (or Aleph Cloud if you want decentralized infra). Only reach for GitLab CE if you genuinely need its integrated CI/CD and registry — and budget accordingly for the VM it demands.

Recomate earns affiliate commissions on some products featured. Our picks are based on independent testing, not sponsorship.

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