How much does GitHub cost in 2026?

Team: $4 per seat a month on annual billing; Enterprise: $21 per seat a month on annual billing. Unlimited private repos, 2,000 Actions minutes a month, and Issues and Projects. Checked October 26, 2026.

What is a cheaper alternative to GitHub?

GitLab (Free for up to 5 users per private group; Premium $29/user/mo billed yearly), Bitbucket (Free for up to 5 users; Standard $3.65/user/mo), Forgejo (Free and open source; you host it, or use a hosted instance such as Codeberg). Built-in CI and issue boards, but the free plan caps you at 5 users and 400 compute minutes.

Code hosting and collaboration

Should you build your own GitHub?

Q: Should you build your own GitHub?

Buy it. GitHub Team is $4 per user per month, about $720 over 3 years for five people. The Free plan already gives you unlimited private repos and 2,000 Actions minutes a month, so you pay only for branch protection and required reviews on private repos. Running your own Forgejo or Gitea server would cost about $2,600 over 3 years once you count updates and backups, and it puts your source code on a server you must keep secure.

Buy it, or stay on Free. GitHub costs $4 a user, and hosting your own code server costs more in your time.

BUY

Short answer

GitHub Team is $4 per user per month, about $720 over 3 years for five people. The Free plan already gives you unlimited private repos and 2,000 Actions minutes a month, so you pay only for branch protection and required reviews on private repos. Running your own Forgejo or Gitea server would cost about $2,600 over 3 years once you count updates and backups, and it puts your source code on a server you must keep secure.

Buy for 3 years: $720
Build and run for 3 years: $2,641
Verdict: BUY

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Cheaper options

FreeGitLabFree for up to 5 users per private group; Premium $29/user/mo billed yearlyBuilt-in CI and issue boards, but the free plan caps you at 5 users and 400 compute minutes.CheaperBitbucketFree for up to 5 users; Standard $3.65/user/moPairs well with Jira and Trello, but the free plan has only 50 build minutes and a smaller integration ecosystem.Open sourceForgejoFree and open source; you host it, or use a hosted instance such as CodebergA self-hosted forge for teams that want full control, but you handle updates, backups and uptime.

GitHub pricing in 2026

Plan	Billed yearly	Billed monthly
Team Typical	$4/seat/mo	–
Enterprise	$21/seat/mo	–

Free plan: Unlimited private repos, 2,000 Actions minutes a month, and Issues and Projects

Paying too much? GitHub Free is enough until you need required reviews, branch protection rules or code owners on private repos. Those come with Team.

Per user per month, in USD, from GitHub’s pricing page (Enterprise is listed as starting at $21). The page’s yearly view adds the words for the first 12 months, with a footnote we could not read. Checked October 26, 2026.

Run your own numbers

Defaults are a typical small team at $30/hour. Change anything.

If you buy GitHub

Plan

Seats

If you build it

Your time, $ per hour

Hours to build

Upkeep, hours per month

Hosting and services, $ per month

Buy

$720

Build

$2,641

Buying is about $1,921 cheaper over 3 years.

3-year totals. Building includes your time, upkeep, running costs and one month of an AI app builder ($25). Change any number to match your situation.

What you’d build

Forgejo or Gitea installed on a small VPS
Git over SSH and HTTPS with user accounts
Pull requests and code review
A CI runner for builds and tests
Nightly backups and updates

A small VPS for Forgejo or Gitea. Building a Git host from scratch isn’t realistic, so this is the self-hosted route.

What you’d give up

3,000 free Actions minutes and ready-made workflows
Dependabot security updates and Copilot
Codespaces and GitHub Pages
Where contributors, hires and integrations already live

Risks the price doesn’t show

SecurityHigh

Your source code sits on a server you must patch and lock down.

Uptime and backupsHigh

If the server dies, your team loses access until you restore it.

CI runnersMedium

Builds need their own machines and upkeep.

When the verdict flips

Switch to HYBRID if Actions minutes or Codespaces start driving your bill: keep GitHub for code and run builds on your own runners. Move to a SWITCH (GitLab or Bitbucket Free) only if you will never pass 5 people.

Sources

GitHub pricing

Build hours are our estimates for one person using an AI app builder. How we score. Spotted a wrong price? Tell us on X @BuildictHQ.

Related verdicts

Vercel

Developer tools & hosting

SWITCH

Switch to Cloudflare Pages or Netlify. Cloudflare has a free plan and Netlify Pro is $20 flat for the whole team, against $20 per developer on Vercel.

Buy, 3 yrs: $2,160
Build, 3 yrs: $4,705

1Password

Passwords & security

BUY

Buy it. You should not build a password manager, and the Teams Starter Pack is $24.95 a month for 10 people.

Buy, 3 yrs: $898
Build, 3 yrs: $7,705

Adobe Creative Cloud

Design & creative

SWITCH

Switch to Affinity. It is free for photo, vector and layout work, against $69.99 a month for Creative Cloud Pro.

Buy, 3 yrs: $2,520
Build, 3 yrs: $3,925