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GitHub: Everything you need to know about accounts and plans (Part II)

Santiago Macias
Mar 11, 2024

If you are considering using GitHub as a source code hosting and collaboration platform for your new projects, as well as for migrating projects from other DevOps platforms, one of the most important parts you should be familiar with is the offering and pricing model.

In this second article we explain the different plans and billing. If you haven’t seen the first article, I recommend reading it via this link.

Currently, there are 4 different GitHub plans available:

  • GitHub Free
  • GitHub Pro
  • GitHub Team
  • GitHub Enterprise

Overview of GitHub plans

When you visit the official GitHub pricing page https://github.com/pricing, choosing the right tier on your GitHub plan can be confusing because there are many features that we must review in order to select the one that best suits our needs.

Additionally, there are other features that can be include at an extra price for each one.

Important: Notice that there are only 3 different plans instead of the 4 plans mentioned in the Github documentation GitHub’s plans – GitHub Docs, in particular the GitHub Pro option does not appear.

To avoid confuse, GitHub Pro is an upgrade from GitHub Free with advanced features and it cost at $4 per month and currently it’s not shown as an option on the official pricing page, but you can check it in the FAQ section page.

For an explanation on each of the GitHub plans click here

GitHub Free / Pro plans

GitHub Free is the basic plan that is available to everyone at no cost, ideal for small and informal projects. It provides essential features for individual developers including to have unlimited public and private repositories with a limited feature set.

With GitHub Free, you get:

  • You have access to all the features available in GitHub Free plan
  • You can create private repositories to work on proprietary code and projects
  • You can manage permissions and access controls for repositories
  • You can request and perform code reviews to maintain code quality
  • You can use features like discussions, code review assignment, and more

GitHub Pro is an upgrade from GitHub Free for personal accounts ideal for individual developers who want more features and control than the Free plan. It’s designed for using their personal account who want advanced tools and insight within their repositories but don’t belong to a team.

GitHub Pro gives you more tools and insights for your private repositories, such as code owners, protected branches, and repository insights graphs. You also get 3,000 minutes of GitHub Actions per month, 2 GB of GitHub Packages storage, and email support.

To summarize, this plan includes the following options:

  • GitHub Free for personal accounts
  • GitHub Free for organizations accounts
  • GitHub Pro for personal accounts (via upgrade at cost $4)

GitHub Team plans

This plan is ideal for organization with small to medium-sized teams working on collaborative projects. It starts at $4 per user per month and includes everything in the Free plan, plus additional features like unlimited private repositories, team and organization tools, advanced issue tracking, and more.

GitHub Team is the version of GitHub Pro for organizations, it provides increased GitHub Actions minutes and extra GitHub Packages storage and it cost at $4 per user/month.

Some key features of GitHub Team include:

  • You have access to all the features available in GitHub Free.
  • You can create private repositories to work on proprietary code and projects.
  • You can manage team permissions and access controls for repositories.
  • You can request and perform code reviews to maintain code quality.
  • You can use specific features like team discussions, team code review assignment, etc.
  • More advanced project and issue tracking functions.

GitHub Enterprise plan

GitHub Enterprise plan is designed for large organizations and starts at $21 per user per month. It includes everything in the Team plan, plus additional features like enterprise-grade security, scalability, advanced auditing, compliance and access to enterprise-level support.

There are two different GitHub Enterprise options:

  • GitHub Enterprise Server
  • GitHub Enterprise Cloud

Some key features of GitHub Enterprise plan include:

  • You have access to all the features available in GitHub Team.
  • You get advanced security and compliance features, such as advanced auditing, enterprise identity providers, and enforced SAML single sign-on.
  • GitHub Enterprise ensures high availability and scalability to handle the needs of large organizations.
  • You can deploy GitHub Enterprise on your own infrastructure or in the cloud.
  • You can customize the appearance, workflows, and integrations with other tools according to your organization’s requirements.

Additionally, GitHub Enterprise Server allows you to host your repositories on your own servers, providing even more control and customization options

GitHub pricing calculator

Similar to other cloud platforms, we can configure and estimate the costs for GitHub products using a calculator to select the different options and number of seats that we can hire in GitHub.

Note: on the price calculator page, only the paid options are available.

Reference: https://github.com/pricing/calculator

Billing and Payment

This section refers to the billing and payments system at GitHub. The bill for each account on GitHub consists of the account’s plan, plus any other subscriptions and usage-based billing for the account.

This means that you will receive a separate bill for your personal account and for each organization or enterprise account you own in the GitHub platform.

Here are some important details:

  • GitHub bills separately for each account
  • You can choose to pay monthly or annually for each account
  • You can pay for GitHub with a credit card or PayPal account
  • All subscriptions and usage-based billing associated with an account share a billing date, payment method, and receipt

In this link, you can learn about the different components of your bill: Billing and payments documentation

Reference and invoice example with more details: About billing on GitHub

Conclusions

GitHub offers different plans for storing and collaborating on the entire software development life cycle to meet the needs of individual users, teams and companies.

Available plans include GitHub Free and Pro, ideal for individual developers, GitHub Team designed for small to medium-sized teams, and GitHub Enterprise is intended for large organizations that require advanced security, compliance, customization, and support.

It’s recommended to review and explore the different GitHub plans and accounts to choose the right one for your organization and understand the billing model.

References

GitHub Plans: GitHub’s plans – GitHub Docs

GitHub Pricing: Plans for every developer · GitHub

GitHub Calculator: https://github.com/pricing/calculator

GitHub Billing Plans: About billing for plans – GitHub Docs

GitHub for enterprises: About GitHub for enterprises

GitHub for enterprise Cloud: About GitHub Enterprise Cloud

GitHub Team or Free? https://github.blog/2022-06-01-github-team-or-free-how-to-choose-the-right-plan

About the author

Azure Cloud Architect | Spain
I’m solutions architect for about 20 years of experience, passionate in cultural/digital transformation, contributor as Microsoft Gold Partner and MPN in Azure Cloud Platform including offering, presales, strategic plans, technical solutions, prototypes and PoCs.

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