European alternatives to GitHub.

GitHub is the default home for source code for most of the software industry, but it remains a US product: GitHub, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation, runs largely on Microsoft-controlled infrastructure, and falls within the reach of the US CLOUD Act. For a repository, that reach covers not just the code but the issue history, CI logs, access tokens, and security advisories. This page maps the European alternatives against GitHub, checking who legally owns each service, where the data physically sits, and what compliance posture each one can evidence: the profile a European procurement team needs for a Schrems II transfer impact assessment.

The two European services here both build on Forgejo, the open-source forge governed by Codeberg e.V. in Germany, which means the underlying engine is auditable and self-hostable regardless of which you choose. Codeberg (Germany, Berlin, non-profit, EU-hosted, free, CLOUD Act exposure: None) is the community-governed option and the natural home for open-source projects. Codebahn (Swedish operator, France-hosted, paid and supported, CLOUD Act exposure: None) is the commercial managed option with a public DPA and a fully EU-incorporated sub-processor chain, aimed at teams that need contractual guarantees.

So what actually carries over from a GitHub account?

• Git repositories with full branch and tag history (portable by design).
• Issues, pull requests, labels, milestones, and releases (migrated by the Forgejo importer).
• Code review with inline comments and branch protection rules.
• Hosted CI/CD (Codeberg CI on Woodpecker, or Codebahn's EU runners).
• Package registry and container registry.
• Webhooks and a REST API for your own integrations.

Not everything makes the trip, though:

• GitHub Actions marketplace. The CI concepts carry over, but the workflow syntax and the third-party Actions ecosystem do not; pipelines need rewriting.
• GitHub Copilot and AI features. European forges ship without US-hosted AI by default, since it would defeat the sovereignty argument; you can integrate a European AI assistant separately.
• Network effect and discoverability. GitHub's social graph, stars, and drive-by contributions are hard to replicate. Codeberg has an active open-source community, but it is smaller.
• The large integration marketplace. Many SaaS tools integrate with GitHub out of the box; with a smaller forge you may need webhooks or the API instead of a one-click app.

Moving a repository off GitHub comes down to a handful of steps, whichever European forge you land on.

1. Start with the Forgejo migration importer. Both Codeberg and Codebahn expose Forgejo's "New Migration" flow: paste the GitHub repository URL and a personal access token, and it pulls the code plus issues, pull requests, labels, milestones, releases, and the wiki in one pass. For a bare code-only move, git push --mirror to the new remote also works.
2. Rewrite your CI pipeline. This is usually the largest task. Translate the GitHub Actions workflow into a Woodpecker pipeline (Codeberg) or the Codebahn CI format, and replace any marketplace Actions with equivalent steps or scripts.
3. Re-point local clones and integrations. Update each developer's git remote set-url, and re-point any deployment webhooks, status checks, or bots to the new forge's API.
4. Reissue tokens and secrets. CI secrets and deploy keys do not migrate; recreate them on the new forge and rotate anything that was exposed to GitHub.
5. Notify collaborators and update links. README badges, documentation links, and package-registry references that point at github.com need updating; send collaborators the new repository URL.
6. Keep the GitHub repo as a read-only mirror for 60 days. Repositories accumulate silent dependents: a CI job elsewhere, a package manager pulling a tag, a link in someone's docs. Archive the GitHub repo rather than delete it, so nothing breaks silently during the cutover.