Managed Forgejo hosting
Forgejo is GPL-licensed free software with its legal home at Codeberg e.V., a German non-profit. It runs Fedora's forge (migration in progress) and thousands of self-hosted instances. Self-hosting it is straightforward. Keeping it running, patched, backed up, and monitored is the part that costs weekends.
Codebahn runs a maintained Forgejo fork on EU infrastructure. You get the same Git workflows without the ops.
What you stop managing
- Security patches. Applied as upstream ships. OS updates automatic.
- TLS, DNS, monitoring, email delivery. Configured and maintained.
- Backups. Daily encrypted, stored in a separate EU region (Hetzner, Falkenstein). Restores tested weekly.
- CI runners. Pick a size in
runs-on, get an isolated ephemeral VM in Paris. No runner binary, no Docker host, no registration tokens.
What Codebahn adds to Forgejo
GitHub Actions compatibility..github/workflows/ files run without renaming. Pre-cached Go and Node toolchains. Auto-cancel on same-branch push.
Deployment environments. Paste a PaaS webhook URL (Vercel, Netlify, Railway, Render, Cloudflare Pages). Deploy results appear on the commit and PR. Environment docs.
Bot identity for CI. Each job gets a short-lived, repo-scoped token under a real user identity. Renovate PRs trigger CI. The built-in Actions token cannot. Token details.
Container registry. Built-in OCI registry. In CI, the job token authenticates automatically. Every image is private. Registry docs.
Built-in MCP server. AI assistants connect with a URL and OAuth. No binary to install. Repos, branches, issues, PRs, reviews, and CI. MCP setup.
Self-host vs managed
| Self-host | One-click VPS host | Codebahn | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs ops | You | You (easier install) | Codebahn |
| Backups | You configure | You configure | Daily encrypted, separate EU region |
| Tested restores | You test | You test | Weekly |
| Upgrades and patches | You apply | You apply | Applied as upstream ships |
| CI runners | BYO or external | BYO or external | Hosted (EU). BYO alongside |
| Pricing | VPS cost + your time | VPS cost + markup + your time | from €19/mo (Crew), €9/mo (Solo) |
| EU jurisdiction | Depends on provider | Depends on host | EU-only. All sub-processors EU-incorporated |
| Export | Forgejo native | Forgejo native | Forgejo native. One-click org export |
Self-hosting is cheaper if your time is free. A Hetzner VPS runs Forgejo for about €6/month. Codebahn Crew from €19/month buys patches, backups, hosted CI, and no on-call. Full pricing. For a deeper look, see Codebahn vs self-hosting Forgejo.
What stays the same
Everything not listed above is stock Forgejo: repos, the REST API, OAuth providers, packages, and admin. Upstream Forgejo docs cover all of it.
When to choose something else
Open source: every repo here is private, so this is the wrong tool. Use a public forge.
Full control, air-gapped, or custom Forgejo patches: self-host.
SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit reports today: we are not your vendor yet.
Every plan runs on EU-only infrastructure with no US entity in the chain.
Use it for 14 days. If it's not right, one email and I refund it.
Forgejo's legal home is Codeberg e.V. Codebahn is an independent managed service built on Forgejo and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Forgejo project or Codeberg e.V.