GitHub’s free alternatives

Personally, I love GitHub.  And I try to promote it as much as I can, and I’ve even got a few organizations setup their repositories there.  However, I am still asked once in a while for a good alternative.  These work either for people who don’t have the money to pay for GitHub’s private repositories, or who are required to keep their code in-house.

Here are a few alternatives to the GitHub hosting service. There are two types of software: locally installed software and hosted.  These are decent for smaller companies that don’t have the budget for licensing a hosted service.

Free Local Install

  • gitlabhq.com – this project looks really good, with new releases every month.
  • gitorious – solid, free alternative to GitHub.

Free Hosted

  • gitorious.org –  open source projects are free, like github.
  • bitbucket – unlimited free private repositories for up to 5 users. The pricing model is similar to the other Atlassian products.

Also, have a look at Sourcegraph, which you can host yourself or pay for a hosted service.

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