What are the best free bug-tracking tools for programming?

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12 Options Considered

Best free bug-tracking tools for programming?	Price	Mercurial	Git
-- GitLab issues	-	no	yes
78 GitHub Issues	-	no	yes
-- Phabricator	-	Yes (no largefiles extension)	Yes
63 Bitbucket's bug tracker	Free+	yes	yes
61 Redmine	-	yes	yes

See Full List

GitLab issues

Top Pro

Good web UI

GitLab's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information. It displays the activity in a feed-type way in the most prominent part of the view. On top of that, there's a toolbar with buttons which can filter this feed by pushes, merge events or comments. On the left, there's a menu that displays all the links that take you to the different views. For example, a file directory which displays all the files in that repo, a commit view which displays all the commits in cronological order, a network and a graph view that display important information graphically etc... All these details make GitLab's UI extremely intuitive and easy to use, no view is overflown with information and every view displays only the most useful and crucial information needed at that time. See More

Top Con

Search functionality is not that refined

While you can search for users or projects, you cannot search for a filename. This makes GitLab's search one of the weak points in an otherwise great tool. See More

Specs

Mercurial:no

Git:yes

SVN:no

Top Pro

Comes with integrated CI/CD solution

GitLab CI makes it easy to set up CI and deployment for projects in GitLab. It supports parallel testing, multiple platforms, Docker containers and streaming build logs. See More

Top Pro

Regular updates

GitLab is being constantly worked on and has a new release every month on the 22nd. Updating is also very easy through a single upgrade script. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Gitlab is a free open source project licensed under MIT. Source code for Enterprise Edition can be found here and Community Edition here. See More

Top Pro

No support for reply via email

A solution is planned, but no ETA yet. See More

Top Pro

Issues can have weight

On GitLab EE (free for open-source projects only) you can set the weight of an issue during its creation (from 1 to 9) to get a better idea of how much time, value or complexity a given issue has. See More

See All

GitHub Issues

Top Pro

Large community

GitHub is the largest code host on the planet with over 21.4 million hosted repositories and many users. It's unarguably the largest VCS used by developers worldwide and as such, it has a vibrant community that follows it resulting in many guides and tutorials for new users. Even experienced developers can always find an answer to any question they may have. See More

Top Con

Proprietary tool

Specs

Mercurial:no

Git:yes

Top Pro

Nice and usable UI

GitHub's UI is clean and intuitive. Each view is designed to not fill the screen with useless information. For example, the repository view displays only the most crucial data about that repo - on the top it displays the number of commits, branches, releases and contributors. When clicked, each of them will take the user to a page that displays more detailed information. See More

Top Con

Only public repositories are free

Unfortunately, compared to some other competitors, GitHub offers closed repositories only for premium users, and the price is not cheap at all. See More

Top Pro

Simplified team management tools

GitHub has easy and useful features to control teams, large and small alike. Team members can be given different powers on different projects, ranging from the ability to create them, to only being able to have read-only access. See More

Top Con

Issues are not systematically linked to a specific release

Top Pro

Convenient continuous integration with Travis CI

GitHub can be integrated with Travis CI for code testing and it is free for free open-source projects. See More

Top Con

Only git repositories are fully supported

Github has full support only for Git, while it has some support for SVN. But it doesn't have any support for Mercurial though. See More

Top Pro

Supports Two-Factor authentication

GitHub has added another layer of security to their user accounts. This layer comes in the form of Two-Factor authentication. After it's enabled, GitHub delivers an authentication code by SMS, or by a free application for smartphones. After two-factor authentication is enabled, the authentication code is sent to the account owner's phone any time someone attempts to sign into their GitHub account. This means that only someone who has both the password and authentication code can sign into the account. See More

Top Pro

Anyone can fork

Any user can fork a project and submit a pull request. If accepted by the owner, the fork will be merged with the master branch. See More

Top Pro

Excellent native apps

GitHub has native apps for mobile (iOS and Android), Windows and Mac, which make code deployment easier and faster. See More

See All

Phabricator

Top Pro

Actively updated

Phabricator is quickly improving, with bug fixes and new features added often. There is an update to the changelog every couple of weeks. See More

Top Con

Expects you to use its workflow for merging code to master

Phabricator expects you to use all of its workflow to merge code back into the master branch. Though this can be worked around through configuration. See More

Specs

Mercurial:Yes (no largefiles extension)

Top Pro

Open Source

Phabricator is open source under the Apache 2.0 license. See More

Top Pro

Command Line Access (via arc)

Top Pro

Visual workboards

Beautiful project workboards built directly into the product alongside bug tracking and code review for effective project management. See More

Top Pro

Good looking

Top Pro

Code ownership

Users can subscribe to files or even repositories and notifications will be sent when code you are subscribed to is changed. See More

Top Pro

Supports the three major version control systems

Support for Git, SVN and Mercurial is available. See More

See All

Bitbucket's bug tracker

Top Pro

Free unlimited private repositories for small teams

Bitbucket offers unlimited private repositories for free, as long as the number of members in a team is not larger than 5. BitBucket does not use GitHub's pricing plan, instead of charging users for each private repo, it charges teams per number of team members. It is free for up to 5 people. See More

Top Con

Only 5 users are free

5 users free: Unlimited private repos, Dedicated support, Code reviews, Custom domains, JIRA integration, REST API. See More

Specs

Mercurial:yes

Git:yes

SVN:–

Top Pro

Supports both Mercurial and Git

Has full support for both Mercurial and Git VCS. See More

Top Con

Integration with other tools is not as good as github

Most of the 3rd party tools ( bug trackers, CI servers, chat servers, etc) always integrate with GitHub first, and either don't integrate with Bitbucket at all or do sub par job in it. For example there are 3 separate projects to allow building and verifying pull request submissions on Jenkins CI server and there is only one viable one for BitBucket and that one is really buggy and lacking many features. The only exception to this rule is Atlassian products like Jira. See More

Top Pro

Native application for both Mac and Windows

Atlassian, the company behind BitBucket is also behind SourceTree, a free application for Windows and Mac wich works as a client for both Git and Mercurial which can be connected to BitBucket and other code hosting services. See More

Top Con

The UI seems old and not very polished

While GitHub's UI is extremely simple to understand and very polished, BitBucket lacks a bit on this category. With a design that seems old and not as pleasant to look at. See More

Top Pro

Multiple authentication methods

BitBucket supports GitHub, Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, Google and even GitHub authentication. See More

See All

Redmine

Top Pro

User created reports and listings

Searches can be saved as listings together with sorting and grouping. See More

Top Con

No hosted solution

In order to use redmine you have to install it into your own server or computer where you also need to have Ruby installed first. While it's not extremely hard, it's not an easy feat for a beginner. See More

Specs

Mercurial:yes

Git:yes

SVN:yes

Technology:Ruby on Rails

Top Pro

Open source

Redmine is a free and open source tool. See More

Top Con

Picky

Whenever you get it to run properly, you can never be sure that additional system upgrades will leave you with a running Redmine. See More

Top Pro

Visually appealing and has high usability

Redmine's UI is very simple and easy to learn to use. It does not overwhelm users with many options and information at once. See More

Top Pro

Works well out of the box, but allows easy customisation for extra data fields

You can add additional custom fields to things like issues, time log entries, and so on. This allows for useful customisation of Redmine to fit different workflows and internal systems. See More

Top Pro

Self-hosted

You have complete control over the data you store. See More

Top Pro

Active development community

The code is actively developed, and is slowly improving with time. Older versions are maintained for those who don't want to upgrade regularly. See More

See All

Lean Testing

Top Pro

Hosted

Offers a hosted version, which is very helpful if you want to avoid the time and energy it takes to host a bug tracker on your own internal server. See More

Top Con

Not very popular

Since it's not a very popular solution, there are not as many guides and resources for this out there. Plus, there's also a greater risk of it shutting down one day than other, more popular issue trackers. See More

Top Pro

Slack integration

Can easily be integrated with Slack. See More

Top Pro

Free unlimited projects & team members

Lean Testing is free for an unlimited number of team members or projects. See More

Top Pro

Test plan manager

Includes a manager for testing plans. See More

See All

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12 Options Considered

My Recommendation for GitLab issues

My Recommendation for GitLab issues

Good web UI

Search functionality is not that refined

Comes with integrated CI/CD solution

Regular updates

Free and open source

No support for reply via email

Issues can have weight

My Recommendation for GitHub Issues

My Recommendation for GitHub Issues

Large community

Proprietary tool

Nice and usable UI

Only public repositories are free

Simplified team management tools

Issues are not systematically linked to a specific release

Convenient continuous integration with Travis CI

Only git repositories are fully supported

Supports Two-Factor authentication

Anyone can fork

Excellent native apps

My Recommendation for Phabricator

My Recommendation for Phabricator

Actively updated

Expects you to use its workflow for merging code to master

Open Source

Command Line Access (via arc)

Visual workboards

Good looking

Code ownership

Supports the three major version control systems

My Recommendation for Bitbucket's bug tracker

My Recommendation for Bitbucket's bug tracker

Free unlimited private repositories for small teams

Only 5 users are free

Supports both Mercurial and Git

Integration with other tools is not as good as github

Native application for both Mac and Windows

The UI seems old and not very polished

Multiple authentication methods

My Recommendation for Redmine

My Recommendation for Redmine

User created reports and listings

No hosted solution

Open source

Picky

Visually appealing and has high usability

Works well out of the box, but allows easy customisation for extra data fields

Self-hosted

Active development community

My Recommendation for Bugs Everywhere

My Recommendation for Bugs Everywhere

Only Linux

Bug state can be modified offline

Source code hosted on Gitorious

Complements distributed version control systems

My Recommendation for Bugs

My Recommendation for Bugs

Simple installation

Based on an outdated Laravel version

Free and opensource

My Recommendation for Mantis BT

My Recommendation for Mantis BT

Open source

Little integration

Light

Too simple

No documentation can be found in the installation files

My Recommendation for Lean Testing

My Recommendation for Lean Testing

Hosted

Not very popular

Slack integration

Free unlimited projects & team members

Test plan manager

My Recommendation for The Bug Genie

My Recommendation for The Bug Genie

Open Source (MPL)