How much RAM does Gitea need? We measured: 158 MB idle
Gitea (git hosting / software forge) used 158 MB of RAM across 1 process sitting idle with default configuration — measured by us, on real hardware, not copied from another blog. Runtime: Single Go binary (SQLite backend)
On 1 GB, run Gitea alone plus the OS. It fits with room for git spikes.
What the vendors say
Gitea's docs themselves say a low-end VPS is enough for small teams; third-party hosting guides frequently recommend 2–4 GB.
What changes under load
Git operations (clones of large repos, diffs of huge files) spawn git subprocesses that spike RAM and CPU briefly. With SQLite and a handful of users, 1 GB holds. Switch to Postgres and add CI runners and you want 2 GB+.
Methodology
Each app was started with its default configuration and an empty data directory, left to settle for 25–30 seconds, and confirmed alive with an HTTP request to its web interface. We then recorded the resident set size (RSS) of the app's entire process tree via ps. Apps were run directly on the host (no Docker), so numbers exclude container overhead (~10–30 MB with Docker).
A fresh minimal Ubuntu 24.04 VPS typically idles at roughly 200–300 MB RSS (kernel, systemd, sshd, journald). All 'fits on' verdicts below assume ~300 MB reserved for the OS.
Where to run it
A 1 GB instance from Hetzner, Vultr or DigitalOcean covers this app with the OS overhead included. Don't pay for RAM the measurements say you won't use.
Other apps we measured
File Browser (16 MB), Gotify (20 MB), ntfy (27 MB), PocketBase (31 MB), Caddy (40 MB), Navidrome (47 MB), Syncthing (57 MB), Prometheus (70 MB), MinIO (132 MB), Uptime Kuma (136 MB), Forgejo (173 MB), code-server (VS Code in the browser) (191 MB)