GitHub offers four core pricing tiers — Free, Team, Enterprise, and add-on products like Copilot — and the pricing rules have changed enough in 2026 that most developers and teams are paying for things they don’t need (or missing the limits on the plan they have).
This guide breaks down every plan, what Actions minutes and Codespaces hours actually cost, and how to decide where to land.
GitHub Plans at a Glance (2026)
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Solo devs, open source, small private projects |
| Team | $4/user/month | Small teams needing role-based access and protected branches |
| Enterprise | $21/user/month | Larger orgs needing SSO, audit log, and compliance |
| Copilot Individual | $10/month | Solo developers wanting AI completions |
| Copilot Business | $19/user/month | Teams standardizing on AI coding |
| Copilot Enterprise | $39/user/month | Orgs needing org-wide context and policy controls |
Pricing is per active user — inactive users in Enterprise plans get reconciled monthly, which is good news for teams with rotating contractors.
Free Plan: Surprisingly Generous
GitHub’s free plan is the most generous in the developer tools space. Unlimited public and private repositories, unlimited collaborators on public repos, and 2,000 Actions minutes per month for private repos.
Free includes:
- Unlimited public/private repos
- 2,000 CI/CD minutes/month (Linux)
- 500 MB of Packages storage
- 15 GB of Codespaces storage (when enabled)
- Basic security features (Dependabot alerts)
- Community support
What’s missing: protected branches on private repos (you get them on public), required reviewers, and team-level access controls.
For solo developers, freelancers, or anyone working on side projects, Free is enough. The friction point is when you want to gate merges to main on a private repo — that requires Team.
Team Plan ($4/user/month)
The Team plan is where serious private collaboration starts. The jump from Free to Team is small in price but large in capability.
Added in Team:
- Protected branches on private repos
- Required reviewers and CODEOWNERS enforcement
- Draft pull requests
- 3,000 CI/CD minutes/month
- 2 GB Packages storage
- Code review assignments
- Scheduled reminders
At $4 per user, Team is cheap for what it gives you — most teams of 3+ developers should be here. The realistic monthly cost for a 5-person team is $20.
Enterprise Plan ($21/user/month)
Enterprise is a 5x jump from Team, and you should be honest about whether you need it. The features that justify the price are mostly compliance and identity controls.
Added in Enterprise:
- SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning
- Audit log API
- IP allow lists
- Enterprise-managed users
- 50,000 CI/CD minutes/month
- 50 GB Packages storage
- Premium support with SLA
- Advanced security features (when added)
If your company has a security or compliance team that requires SSO and audit logs, Enterprise is non-negotiable. If you’re a fast-moving startup, Team plus add-on Advanced Security usually beats jumping to Enterprise.
GitHub Copilot Pricing in 2026
Copilot is a separate product line and the pricing has tiered further this year.
Copilot Individual ($10/month or $100/year):
- Code completions in IDE
- Chat in IDE and on github.com
- Voice interactions
- Free for verified students and OSS maintainers
Copilot Business ($19/user/month):
- Everything in Individual
- Organization policy controls (block public code matching, content exclusions)
- IP indemnity
- Audit logs
Copilot Enterprise ($39/user/month):
- Everything in Business
- Context from your codebase (org-wide indexed search)
- Pull request summaries
- Knowledge bases
- Custom models (where available)
The honest answer on which Copilot to pick: solo devs should be on Individual, any team handling client code should be on Business minimum (for IP indemnity), and Enterprise is worth it only if you actively use the codebase-context features.
Actions Minutes: The Hidden Cost
CI/CD minutes are where bills surprise people. Free and Team plans include minutes for Linux runners — but Windows runners cost 2x, macOS runners cost 10x, and overage minutes are billed per use.
Overage pricing (2026):
- Linux: $0.008/minute
- Windows: $0.016/minute
- macOS: $0.08/minute
A team running a typical CI pipeline (5 minutes per push, 100 pushes per week, Linux) burns ~2,000 minutes/month — right at the Team plan limit. Add macOS for iOS builds and the overage shows up fast.
The fix isn’t usually upgrading — it’s optimizing pipelines (cached dependencies, conditional matrix builds, larger but fewer runners).
GitHub vs Alternatives
| Feature | GitHub Team | GitLab Premium | Bitbucket Standard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price/user | $4 | $29 | $3 |
| CI/CD minutes | 3,000 | 10,000 | 2,500 |
| Required reviewers | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in security scanning | Add-on | ✅ | Add-on |
| Marketplace size | Largest | Smaller | Smallest |
GitHub Team is the cheapest mainstream option for the features most teams use. GitLab Premium includes more in the box but costs ~7x. See our GitHub vs GitLab comparison for the full breakdown.
Which Plan Should You Pick?
- Solo developer / open source: Free + optional Copilot Individual
- 2-10 person startup: Team + Copilot Business
- Mid-market (50-200 employees): Team or Enterprise (depending on SSO needs) + Copilot Business
- Regulated industry / 200+ employees: Enterprise + Copilot Enterprise + Advanced Security
The most common mistake is jumping to Enterprise for features you can get with Team plus a security add-on. The second most common is staying on Free with a team of 5 and losing time to merge conflicts because protected branches aren’t available.
Ready to compare developer tools?
See how GitHub stacks up against GitLab, Bitbucket, and other developer tools →