GitHub private repos are now free for teams

If you ever wanted to put that big idea that you’ve always had into action and start your own small tech company, well now you can. Not only do you arguably have more time on your hands, but things just got easier for you from a code repository perspective as Microsoft’s GitHub has announced that they are reducing the prices of its different accounts quite considerably while also opening up private repositories to people for free.

The free model of GitHub gave you unlimited repositories so long as they were public — effectively ensuring the platform’s free plan couldn’t be used by a start-up or a small company — while the $7 per month Pro plan added unlimited collaborators and a few other perks while maintaining the public requirement. Having private repositories available for free, essentially means that you can now start working on your next proprietary code without fear of others seeing your brilliant work. Though that also means people will be unable to contribute towards making it better unless they also join up to your private repository. Which is going to be possible as well with unlimited collaborators allowed on your private repo, as detailed in Github’s official statement below:

Until now, if your organization wanted to use GitHub for private development, you had to subscribe to one of our paid plans. But every developer on earth should have access to GitHub. Price shouldn’t be a barrier.

This means teams can now manage their work together in one place: CI/CD, project management, code review, packages, and more. We want everyone to be able to ship great software on the platform developers love.

Teams who need advanced features (like code owners), enterprise features (like SAML), or personalized support can upgrade to one of our paid plans.

We’re also reducing the price of our paid Team plan from $9 per user/month to $4 per user/month, effective immediately. Existing customers will have their bills automatically reduced going forward.

It’s worth noting though that these private reops still have limits and as they grow in scale and businesses start to make money that the funding model does change. However, if you’re making money then you can afford that, so it’s still a win-win for aspiring techies who want to code the next big thing.

This is a great initiative by GitHub and something which will support the idea of people being able to work and be productive from the comfort of their homes. Hopefully, we see a new generation of start-ups born from this initiative that makes our world even more tech-friendly. Excuse me while I go and create my Skynet repo then because surely nothing can go wrong with a name like that.

Last Updated: April 16, 2020