How do collaborators work? Do they have to pay?

Collaborators are people you add to your private repositories. A plan with one collaborator means you may have your own private repositories and add one other person to any or all of your private repositories.

Collaborators may fork your private repositories without using up any of your private repository quota, and without needing their own paid plan. Any space a collaborator's private repository uses goes against your plan's total amount of space.

Are my repositories secure?

Private repositories are only accessible through SSL and SSH. We make every possible attempt to never transmit your data unencrypted. That said, we take security very seriously: any security bugs found are our highest priority.

Are my repositories private?

Yes they are. You retain all copyright and ownership of your data, as well. Please see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more information.

Do you back up my repositories?

All repositories are hosted on a redundant disk array and backed up nightly off-site to encrypted S3.

I'm a solo freelance developer - which plan is right for me?

Many freelancers encourage their clients to purchase a Micro or Small plan. The client can then add the freelancer as a collaborator and has the freedom to add a separate developer or designer as a collaborator (should the need arise).

We're a small development company - which plan is right for us?

Small development shops often choose to host client repositories on their own, company-based plan. The development team then controls who has access to the repository from one central plan.

As an example, the Err Free LLC development company has a Small 'errfree' account which they use to host client repositories and their own, in-house products. Err Free employees are then added to the client and company repositories as collaborators, forking and pulling from there.

Logical Awesome LLC, on the other hand, chooses not to use a company account. Instead one founding member hosts the Small plan and all repositories. Thanks to deploy keys and collaborators, this works quite well.

We're a massive company. Do you have any bigger plans?

Contact us at support@github.com to work something out.

Is this a commitment?

No, you can cancel or upgrade/downgrade your plan at any time.

[1] The 100MB is a soft limit setup to prevent abuse of the service. If your open source project needs more space, email us, we're happy to provide it.