Fossil

A Coherent Software Configuration Management System

Also known as
fossil

What is Fossil?

Distributed version control system with integrated project management including bug tracking, wiki, forum, email alerts, chat, and technotes, featuring a built-in web interface.

Independently observed

Fossil pricing

We don't have Fossil's full plan breakdown yet (its pricing page resisted automated reading). Here's what we could confirm. Always check live pricing for exact numbers.

Pricing as of verify at live pricing ↗Independently observed
Open sourceFree tier

Free and open-source (2-clause BSD license)

What Fossil does

The capabilities that matter for version control, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.

Model
VCS model
Distributed
Underlying VCS supported (Git / Mercurial / SVN / Perforce / multiple)
-
Deployment
Hosting
Self-hosted only
Review
Code review
-
Storage
Large-file / binary handling
-
Scale
Monorepo scale (partial clone / sparse / VFS)
-
DevOps
Built-in CI
-
Access
Access control granularity
-
Federation
Federation / decentralisation (ActivityPub / email)
-
Licensing
Open-source core
Open-source
Self-managed license model
Free
Integration
API surface (REST / GraphQL / webhooks)
-
Enterprise
SSO / SAML / SCIM
-
Security
Signed commits / supply-chain (GPG / SSH / sigstore)
-
Independently observed

Platform & deployment

Independently observed
Platforms
  • CLI
  • macOS
  • Web
  • Linux
  • Windows
Deployment
  • Self-hosted

Integrations (1)

Independently observed
  • GitHub

Fossil alternatives

Other version control we track, ranked by the same independent score.

Independent · unbought · dated

The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence

Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Fossil, not the verdict.

Balanced composite 60 / 100
low · 14%
Signal contributions to the composite score
SignalScoreWeightContributionEvidence
Pricing Transparency808.00640.0
Price Level1006.00600.0
Integrations98.0069.3
Reliability08.000.0-
Capabilities016.000.0-
Security Posture013.000.0-

Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.

All data & sourcesshow ↓

Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.

Features

AttributeValueEvidence
Capabilities{"hosting":"self","vcs_model":"distributed","license_model":"free","open_source_core":"open_source"}mediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%

Integrations

AttributeValueEvidence
Count1mediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%

Pricing

AttributeValueEvidence
Free tierYesmediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%
Modelcommercialmediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%
Price levelfreemediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%
TransparentYesmediumsource · 2026-08-03 · 60%