I've been using GitLab since the early days, but a week ago I switched to Forgejo. Power usage on the server dropped by 10%, despite both being idle most of the time.

As the author says, GitLab feels sluggish, and is bloated with 1001 thing I'd never use that just makes the UI a pain. Despite all the features I don't need, some that I would benefit from are disabled in the free version.

Forgejo is simpler. It allows me to hide features per project that I don't need. Bit there are some tradeoffs. Updates on GitLab was great. I've been letting it self update for years with no issues. This does not work on Forgejo. Forgejo is also a lot less polished, and some features just doesn't seem to work like they should.