About per-user pricing
New organizations on GitHub.com can build public and open-source projects with GitHub Free, or upgrade to a paid product with per-user pricing. For more information, see "GitHub's products" and "Upgrading your GitHub subscription."
Per-user pricing means that each billing cycle, GitHub charges for each member or outside collaborator within your organization. You also pay for each pending member or outside collaborator who has not yet accepted an invitation. GitHub does not charge for members with the billing manager role. For more information, see "Roles in an organization."
GitHub counts each outside collaborator once for billing purposes, even if the person has access to multiple repositories owned by your organization.
For more information about outside collaborators, see "Adding outside collaborators to repositories in your organization."
Organizations using a paid subscription before May 11, 2016 can choose to stay on their existing per-repository plan or switch to per-user pricing. GitHub will notify you twelve months before any mandated change to your subscription. For more information on switching your subscription, see "Upgrading your GitHub subscription."
Overview of per-user pricing
With per-user pricing, each person consumes one license. GitHub identifies individuals by primary email address.
GitHub bills for the following people.
- Organization members, including owners
- Outside collaborators on private repositories owned by your organization, excluding forks
- Anyone with a pending invitation to become an organization owner or member
- Anyone with a pending invitation to become an outside collaborator on private repositories owned by your organization, excluding forks
GitHub does not bill for any of the following people.
- Organization billing managers
- Anyone with a pending invitation to become an organization billing manager
- Anyone with a pending invitation to become an outside collaborator on a public repository owned by your organization
Note: If an invitee does not accept the invitation within seven days, the pending invitation expires automatically. After expiration, GitHub will no longer bill you for the pending invitation.
About changes to your subscription
You can change your GitHub subscription at any time.
About changes for organizations on per-user plans
You can add more users to your organization. If you pay for more users than are currently active, you can also reduce the number of paid users. For more information, see "Upgrading your GitHub subscription" and "Downgrading your GitHub subscription."
If you have questions about your subscription, contact GitHub Support.
To further support your team's collaboration abilities, you can upgrade to GitHub Enterprise Cloud, which includes features like protected branches and code owners on private repositories. For more information about how you can try GitHub Enterprise Cloud for free, see "Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Cloud."
For more information about per-user pricing for GitHub Enterprise Cloud, see the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.
About changes for organizations on per-repository plans
You can upgrade or downgrade between legacy paid plans in your organization's billing settings. When you upgrade to a plan with more private repositories, GitHub immediately moves your account to your new plan and bills you for the difference in price, prorated for the number of days left in your billing cycle.
When you downgrade to a legacy paid plan with fewer private repositories, your new plan will take effect on your next billing date. If you have more private repositories than your new plan allows for, your private repositories will be locked when your new plan takes effect. To reduce your number of private repositories, you can make some of your private repositories public, or you can clone your private repositories locally and delete the copies on GitHub.