Private Repos Are Now FREE on GitHub

Many of us geeks have our own Git servers running – local or otherwise. We like the flexibility and, let’s be honest, we like the tinkering and having our own baby instances of things.

Traditionally, GitHub has been free – with one main condition. All your code must be freely accessible and public to the wider world.

Yeah, it does encourage sharing. But it also encourages developers to not always use GitHub. Private projects and commercially sensitive projects would be kept away from GitHub – well at least by users who didn’t upgrade anyway.

Anyway, the good news is, in case you missed it, since the start of the year, GitHub now offers unlimited private repositories to all accounts – including free accounts!

Any Restrictions?

Indeed. As you might expect, it’s not a free for all. Whilst you can have unlimited private repos now – as per the pro, team and enterprise accounts, you are limited to only three collaborates per private repository.

For most people, this restriction won’t bug them. After all, many people want to use it as a private playground or with a small development team. Once you’re more than a tiny team, you’re probably going to be able to shell out a few dollars a month for the team plan.

So, Is There Any Point In Paid?

Short answer – yes, for some.

You get other extra cool things such as:

Advanced tools and insights on the Pro plan.

Team access control and user management on the Team plan.

A whole host of enterprise-ready enhancements for security, compliance and deployment controls on Enterprise.