GitHub Actions on a private repository
- Free allowance
- USD 12 of included compute usage per month on GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations (the vendor states a monetary amount, not minutes); at USD 0.006 a minute on a standard Linux 2-core runner that is 2,000 minutes per month; USD 18 on Pro and Team, USD 300 on Enterprise Cloud, shared...
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- request-rateUSD 12 of included compute usage a month on Free, or 2,000 minutes on a standard Linux 2-core runner at USD 0.006 a minute; it resets at the start of each billing cycle, and usage is blocked once it is consumed when no payment method is...
- Evidence
- documented17 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-04checked 2026-11-03 (live); stale on 2026-12-04
| Free tier | USD 12 of included compute usage per month on GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations (the vendor states a monetary amount, not minutes); at USD 0.006 a minute on a standard Linux 2-core runner that is 2,000 minutes per month; USD 18 on Pro and Team, USD 300 on Enterprise Cloud, shared with cloud sandbox compute; 500 MB of artifact storage on Free unit credits; metered on wall-clock |
|---|---|
| Price | USD 0.006 per Linux minute beyond the allowance |
| Limits |
|
| Identity | email a GitHub account; no card while inside the included amounts |
| Egress | no egress charge; artifact storage is 500 MB on Free and shared with GitHub Packages free allowance: 500 MB artifact and package storage |
| Per-object cap | 6 hours per job, the same as the public path; the difference is the monthly minute pool |
| Retention | artifacts kept 90 days by default; the runner is destroyed at the end of the job (90 days) |
| Interface | git, cli the same workflow YAML; minutes are charged to the repository owner, not the trigger |
| Tooling | the same runner images as the public path on a smaller machine: on a private repository ubuntu-latest is 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM and 14 GB SSD, against 4 vCPU and 16 GB RAM on a public repository |
| Composes with | the honest paid path: 2,000 minutes is 33 hours of one runner a month, and beyond it Linux billing is USD 0.006 a minute |
| Reliability | no reliability event recorded |
| Notes | 2,000 minutes is 33 hours and the per-job cap still applies, so the two limits are independent and the smaller one wins. A single six-hour job already spends 18% of the month. |
| Evidence note | documented the billing page's plan table was read. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 17
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | Free: 500 MB artifact storage and 2,000 minutes; Pro 1 GB and 3,000; Team 2 GB and 3,000 with 75 GB custom images; Enterprise 50 GB and 50,000; Linux baseline USD 0.006 a minute and Windows USD 0.010 |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | 'Minutes usage is charged to the repository owner, not the person who triggered the workflow runs' |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | GitHub Free includes 500 MB of artifact storage, USD 12 of compute usage a month and 10 GB of cache per repository |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | the private-repository allowance is a monetary amount, not a minute count |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | no payment method is needed inside the included usage; usage stops when it is consumed |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/runners/github-hosted-r | part of the text of Tooling, above |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits | a job on a GitHub-hosted runner is capped at 6 hours |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits | GitHub Free allows 20 concurrent jobs on standard GitHub-hosted runners, 5 of them macOS |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | a standard Linux 2-core runner costs USD 0.006 a minute |
| 2026-10-30 | docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey/creating-a | a GitHub account needs a verified email address |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | GitHub Free includes USD 12 of included compute usage; the table column is headed per month |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | the vendor converts included usage to standard Linux minutes at USD 0.006 a minute |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | the private-repository allowance is a monetary amount, not a minute count |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-a | the allowance is monthly and resets each billing cycle |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/limits | a job on a GitHub-hosted runner is capped at 6 hours |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/runners/github-hosted-r | part of the text of Tooling, above |
| 2026-11-03 | docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey/creating-a | a GitHub account with a verified email address is the registration requirement |
Unknown values 1
- reliability note: nothing of this kind was observed