GitHub Pricing 2026: Complete Breakdown
By ToolVS Research Team · Last Updated April 2026
30-SECOND ANSWER
GitHub Free gives you unlimited public and private repos with unlimited collaborators — it's one of the best free tiers in developer tools. Team at $4/user/month adds protected branches and better CI/CD limits. Enterprise at $21/user/month is for organizations needing SAML SSO and advanced security. Most individual developers and small teams never need to pay.
GitHub Plans & Pricing
Free
- Unlimited public & private repos
- Unlimited collaborators
- 2,000 Actions minutes/month
- 500MB Packages storage
- Community support
- Dependabot alerts
Team
- Everything in Free
- Protected branches & required reviewers
- Code owners
- Draft pull requests
- 3,000 Actions minutes/month
- 2GB Packages storage
- Web-based support
Enterprise
- Everything in Team
- SAML SSO
- Advanced auditing
- 50,000 Actions minutes/month
- 50GB Packages storage
- GitHub Connect
- Premium support (optional add-on)
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
- GitHub Copilot is separate: Individual $10/mo, Business $19/user/mo, Enterprise $39/user/mo
- Actions minutes beyond your plan's allocation cost $0.008/minute (Linux) to $0.016/minute (Windows)
- Packages storage beyond limits costs $0.25/GB per month
- GitHub Advanced Security (code scanning, secret scanning) is an add-on for Enterprise at $49/committer/month
- Large File Storage (LFS) data packs cost $5/month per 50GB
How to Save on GitHub
1. Stay on Free: For most teams under 10 people, the free plan is genuinely sufficient. You get unlimited repos and collaborators.
2. GitHub Education: Students and teachers get GitHub Pro features free through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, including Copilot access.
3. Open source maintainers: GitHub sponsors program can offset costs, and public repos get unlimited Actions minutes.
Who Should Pick Which Plan?
Free: Individual developers, open source projects, small teams, and startups. The free tier is incredibly generous.
Team ($4/user/mo): Growing teams that need branch protection rules, required code reviews, and better CI/CD quotas. The jump from Free to Team is very affordable.
Enterprise ($21/user/mo): Organizations with compliance requirements (SOC 2, HIPAA), needing SAML SSO, audit logs, and centralized policy management across multiple organizations.
Price Comparison: GitHub vs Competitors
| Tool | Free | Team | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub | $0 (unlimited repos) | $4/user/mo | $21/user/mo |
| GitLab | Free (5 users) | $29/user/mo | $99/user/mo |
| Bitbucket | Free (5 users) | $3/user/mo | $6/user/mo |
| Gitea Cloud | Free (self-host) | $3.25/user/mo | Custom |
Frequently Asked Questions
Editor's Take
GitHub's free tier is absurdly generous — unlimited private repos, unlimited collaborators, and 2,000 CI/CD minutes. Most developers will never need to pay. Team at $4/user/month is worth it for the branch protection rules alone. The real cost trap is Copilot: once you add Copilot Business ($19/user/mo) on top of Team ($4/user/mo), you're spending $23/user/month. GitLab Premium is more expensive at $29/user/mo but bundles more DevOps features. For pure git hosting, GitHub Free is unbeatable.
Related Comparisons: GitHub vs GitLab — GitHub vs Bitbucket — GitHub Copilot vs Cursor — All Pricing Guides
Last updated: . Pricing verified monthly.
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