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Archive Repositories in Bitbucket Cloud — Finally

Bitbucket Data Center has had this since version 8.0. Bitbucket Cloud still doesn't. Bitbucket Repo Archiver adds a real archived state: move dead repos out of the way, block merges into them, and tell anyone who stumbles onto one that it's retired.

Most workspaces end up with dozens of abandoned repos cluttering search, navigation, and the repository list — forks nobody finished, services that got decommissioned, experiments that never shipped. Bitbucket Cloud has no native way to flag any of them as inactive, so they just stay there, indistinguishable from active work.

works with Bitbucket Cloud Runs on Atlassian

Real archiving, not just a label

Archiving isn't just a flag nobody else can see.

Archiving a repository moves it into a dedicated 📦 Archived project — out of your default project lists, search results, and navigation, without deleting anything. Unarchive it and it moves right back to where it came from.

Bitbucket repository list showing repositories marked Archived

Blocks merges automatically

An archived repository can't quietly keep accepting code. Bitbucket Repo Archiver wires into Bitbucket's merge checks, so any pull request into an archived repo fails until it's unarchived.

No separate policy to remember, no manual branch lock to set on every repo — it's enforced automatically, every time.

Merge check failing on a pull request into an archived repository

Visible to anyone who finds it

Land on an archived repository's Source page and you'll see a clear 📦 Archived notice before you start digging through stale code.

Open a pull request against one and the same context follows you there — so nobody wastes an afternoon reviewing a change that was never going to merge.

The 📦 Archived notice on a repository's Source page

Runs on Atlassian

Bitbucket Repo Archiver is built on Atlassian Forge, qualifying it for the Runs on Atlassian designation. Archive state and workspace settings are stored via Forge Storage, inside Atlassian's own infrastructure.

There's no external server, no third-party API, and nothing to configure. Install the app and your data never leaves Bitbucket.

Learn about Runs on Atlassian →

One product, installed in two places

Bitbucket Repo Archiver is one product, installed in two places: a Bitbucket app where the actual archiving and merge-blocking happen, and a companion Jira app that surfaces which repos are stale or already archived from a Jira global page.

They're separate Forge apps under the hood — Bitbucket-only apps currently can't be listed on the Atlassian Marketplace — but from your team's side it's one workflow under one name: spot a stale repo in Jira, archive it in Bitbucket.

Who uses it

Platform & DevOps teams

Retire decommissioned services properly: archive the repo the day a service goes away, instead of leaving it to rot at the top of the repository list.

Engineering leads cleaning up a workspace

Run a quarterly cleanup pass from Workspace settings: filter, select, and bulk-archive every repo that hasn't shipped in a year, without deleting any history.

Teams mid-migration

Archive the old repo the moment a migration to a new stack or monorepo lands, so new hires don't accidentally clone the wrong one.

Open-source maintainers

Mark a side project as no-longer-maintained without taking it down — visitors get a clear signal, and any stray pull requests get blocked automatically.

In October 2021 we were deeply moved by the situation at the Polish-Belarus border where thousands of people were trapped at the center of an intensifying geopolitical dispute.

We decided to pay 10% of our revenue (not profit, revenue) to a coalition of human rights organizations Border Group. The group includes people we know in person, as well as members of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.

In February 2022 the border crisis seemed to shade. But as we all know it was replaced by something much worse. We hoped we would never use word “war” in this context.

We donate help for fighting Ukraine. Either through NGOs or via our network of friends who are personally involved in the matter.

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