Understanding GitHub Licensing

• GitHub is licensed on a Per-User basis, but some features incur usage-based charges, and some features are offered as add-ons.
• Free usage is offered for certain scenarios, but enterprise customers should typically choose the paid GitHub Enterprise offering.

GitHub, an application life-cycle solution acquired by Microsoft in 2018, provides many, but not all, the tools that large and small development teams require to create, test, and maintain software. GitHub is offered as both an online service and as on-premises software, and it must typically be supplemented with an integrated development environment (IDE), such as Visual Studio, Eclipse, and XCode, or with a manually assembled set of discrete tools, for functions such as debugging, graphical workflow design, interactive testing, and application profiling.

Except for certain forms of use that are free, GitHub requires Per-User subscriptions along with monthly usage-based charges for hosted workflow (Actions), storage (Packages), and development environment (Codespaces) services, and additional fees for Advanced Security features.