Free versus paid
Free accounts can have as many public repositories as you’d like, with unlimited collaboration. Free accounts do not have private repositories. You can always upgrade from free to paid.
Paid plans provide a number of private repositories (determined by the specific plan), and you may have as many public repositories as you like.
You can see all of our plans at github.com/plans.
How do I choose between a personal plan and a business plan?
If you are an individual, or want to have others work on your project — but it’s your code, you’ll want a personal plan. Here’s why:
- Personal plans are meant for one person to own, with collaborators having access.
- Collaborators have read/write access to the repository, but only the account owner owns it.
- Collaborators can have a free account and access your private repositories (forks and branches share the permissions of the root repository).
- Only you have access to the billing information. Receipts go to the first email on the account.
- The specific plan you choose should take into account how many repositories you need.
- You can upgrade easily, if you need more repositories, buy what you need now and upgrade later.
If you are a company or group who are going to own access to the code together, you’ll want an organization (business) plan. Here’s why:
- Organization accounts can have multiple owners, for if the account owner doesn’t solely own the code.
- Team members can have free accounts and access the organization’s private repositories (forks and branches share the permissions of the root repository).
- Receipts can be sent to a separate billing email address.
- Organizations have permission options: owner, admin, read/write, read-only. Read more about specific permissions.
- Only account owners can access billing.
We also have GitHub: Enterprise, if you’re interested in running a GitHub instance inside your private network.
Please let us know if you have specific questions, by contacting support@github.com.
