GitHub Paid Plans: What Pro, Team and Enterprise Unlock

GitHub separates personal accounts from organizations. A personal account belongs to one developer and can be on GitHub Free or GitHub Pro. An organization is a shared space for a company or project, where repositories and permissions are managed centrally, and it can be on GitHub Free for organizations, GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise.

Several things are billed separately from the plan itself: GitHub Copilot, the advanced security products for private code, and metered services such as extra Actions minutes, Codespaces and package storage beyond what a plan includes. Knowing that split prevents the most common surprise, which is assuming a plan covers everything that carries the GitHub name.

Plan names and exact allowances change from time to time, so treat this guide as a map of what each tier is for, and confirm the details on GitHub's pricing and documentation pages before you pay.

The free plan is more generous than many people expect. Individuals and organizations can create unlimited public and private repositories and invite collaborators, and they get issues, pull requests, Projects for planning, Discussions, and GitHub Pages for public repositories.

Free accounts also include a monthly allowance of GitHub Actions minutes and package storage for private repositories, with public repositories treated far more generously, and personal accounts receive a monthly allowance of Codespaces usage. For hobby projects, open source work and learning, that is often everything you need.

Several security basics are free as well: two-factor authentication and passkeys for signing in, Dependabot alerts and security updates for vulnerable dependencies, and, on public repositories, code scanning and secret scanning with push protection. The limits of the free plan show up mainly when you want review and branch controls on private repositories.

GitHub Pro is the paid plan for personal accounts. Its main job is to bring advanced collaboration and insight tools to private repositories, where the free plan only offers them for public ones.

With Pro, a private repository can use protected branches, required pull request reviewers, multiple reviewers on a pull request, and code owners files that automatically request reviews from the right people. You can also publish GitHub Pages sites from private repositories, keep wikis for them, and see repository insights such as traffic and contributor graphs.

Pro also raises the included allowances for Actions, Packages and Codespaces and adds access to GitHub Support. It suits freelancers, consultants and developers who keep client or personal code private but still want the guard rails that public projects get for free. Verified students can often get Pro at no cost through GitHub Education, so check that route first if it applies to you.

GitHub Team is the organization counterpart of Pro and is billed per member. It brings the same advanced tools to an organization's private repositories and adds features built for groups, such as team reviewers on pull requests, draft pull requests in private repositories and scheduled reminders that nudge reviewers about waiting work.

Team is usually the step up for a startup or small company whose code is private and whose workflow depends on reviews. Branch protection and required reviews on private repositories let you enforce a simple rule such as nothing reaching the main branch without a second pair of eyes, which the free organization plan cannot enforce on private code.

Team also includes larger Actions and Packages allowances than Free, along with access to GitHub Support. For many small and mid-sized teams, it is the plan that covers everyday needs without the administrative overhead of Enterprise.

GitHub Enterprise is aimed at larger organizations and regulated industries. It comes in two main forms: Enterprise Cloud, which runs on GitHub's own infrastructure, and Enterprise Server, which a company hosts in its own data center or cloud account.

The headline features are about control. Enterprise adds single sign-on through the company's identity provider, automated user provisioning and removal, an option in which the company fully manages its members' accounts, policies that apply across many organizations at once, internal repositories visible to everyone in the company, and detailed audit logs that can be streamed to security tools. Options such as IP allow lists and data residency are also part of the Enterprise offering.

Enterprise also brings larger usage allowances, compliance reports that security teams ask for during vendor reviews, and higher support tiers. If your company needs to show who had access to which code and when, or must keep data in a particular region, Enterprise is usually the relevant plan.

GitHub Copilot, the AI coding assistant, is not included in Pro, Team or Enterprise by default. Individuals can start with a limited free tier and move to paid individual plans, while organizations buy Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise seats and manage policies centrally, for example which features are enabled and whether suggestions that match public code are blocked. Verified students, teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects may qualify for free access.

Advanced security for private code works the same way. Code scanning, secret scanning with push protection and dependency review are free on public repositories, but using them on private repositories requires GitHub's paid security products, which organizations on Team or Enterprise can add. GitHub has repackaged these products over time, so check their current names and what each one includes.

For many teams, this is where the real security value lies. Push protection can block a push that contains supported types of secrets, such as tokens and keys, and code scanning can highlight common vulnerability patterns inside pull requests, before the code is merged.

Beyond the plan itself, GitHub bills metered usage for Actions minutes, larger runners, Codespaces, package storage and Git LFS once you go past the included amounts. Set a budget or spending limit in your billing settings so that a runaway workflow or a forgotten codespace does not turn into an unexpected bill.

A quick way to decide: stay on Free if your work is public or you are learning; choose Pro if you keep important private repositories and want branch protection and reviews on them; choose Team when several people collaborate on private code in an organization; and look at Enterprise when single sign-on, audit requirements, internal repositories or data residency come up.

Whatever plan you use, protect the account behind it with two-factor authentication and a password manager, and follow GitHub's terms of service, which among other things limit each person to one free personal account and expect an account to be used by the person who registered it. Organizations should give each member an individual account rather than a shared one, both for security and for a clear audit trail. rStock is not affiliated with GitHub.