GitHub
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
GitHub is Git repository hosting with a collaboration layer on top: pull requests, issue discussions, the Actions build pipeline, Pages static sites, and a package registry. It is owned by Microsoft; in legal terms, the platform describes itself in its terms of service as a service where an account must be tied to a specific individual or legal entity.
For marketing purposes, GitHub is neither a feed nor a social network. There is no ad manager for external campaigns, no paid promotion of posts, and no algorithm that will carry your project to an audience on its own. The only currency is working code and the documentation that comes with it. Anything resembling advertising inside other people's projects is called spam by the platform outright (see the section on restrictions).
What sets it apart from the other platforms in this handbook is that an account here is a working tool, not a storefront. Your profile, your organization, the README file, and the Discussions tab act as the public face of a project, but how visible they are depends on whether people actually use your code.
Who's here
The platform publishes its own annual Octoverse report. The 2025 edition states: "180 million-plus developers now work and build on GitHub" — that is, more than 180 million developers. The same report says more than 36 million developers joined over the year (23% growth year over year) and there are 630 million repositories in total, 121 million of them created in 2025. This is the platform measuring its own accounts, not an independent estimate of how many real people are involved: one person may own both a work and a personal account, and some accounts belong to machines.
Geography. The report names India as the country that added more than 5 million developers over the year, "a little over 14 %" of the total growth, with 21.9 million developers in India. The report was published on 28 October 2025.
Languages. Based on our check of the home page markup, the platform's interface is declared in English with de-de, en-us, fr-fr, ja, ko-kr, and pt-br versions. GitHub does not publish a breakdown of its audience by language.
Getting started
Signing up takes an email address, a username, and a password. The terms set strict boundaries: you must be at least 13 years old (or older where local law requires it), one person or legal entity may hold no more than one free account, and registration by "bots" or other automated means is prohibited. Machine accounts are allowed separately: the person who accepted the terms is responsible for them.
An organization is what takes the place of a "business account" here. The platform describes it as a shared account for collaborating on many projects at once, with roles, nested teams, and cascading permissions. The same page names the ceilings: an organization is limited to owning 100,000 repositories, and above 100,000 members parts of the interface and API functionality may perform worse. An organization is free on the Free plan.
Plans. The pricing page lists: Free — "$ 0 USD per month forever"; Team — "$ 4 USD per user/month"; Enterprise — "Starting at $ 21 USD per user/month". Both paid plans carry the note "for the first 12 months*" next to the price — meaning the figure shown applies to the first twelve months.
What you can publish
The main content is code and repository files. The platform states the size limits plainly: a file over 50 MiB triggers a Git warning, you cannot upload a file over 25 MiB through the browser, and GitHub blocks files over 100 MiB; a repository is recommended to stay under 1 GB, and strongly recommended to stay under 5 GB.
A project site. GitHub Pages is static hosting that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript straight from a repository. Its limits: the source repository is recommended to stay under 1 GB, a published site cannot exceed 1 GB, the soft bandwidth limit is 100 GB per month, and the soft build limit is 10 per hour. The same page carries a direct prohibition: you may not use Pages as free hosting for an online store or a site aimed at commercial transactions or providing commercial SaaS.
Prohibited under the acceptable use policies: sexually obscene content, hate speech and discrimination, misinformation, harassment, threats of violence, impersonation, disclosure of personal data, active malware, and exploits.
How to grow
To be blunt: conventional corporate marketing does not work here, and that is written into the rules. The platform states that the primary content of what you post must not be advertising or promotion, and that you may not advertise in other people's accounts — for example by placing monetized or bulk content in issues. The same document prohibits excessive automated bulk activity and coordinated inauthentic activity, including creating secondary markets to distribute it, as well as activity incentivized by rewards — cryptocurrency airdrops, tokens, credits, or gifts. The practical takeaway: buying and swapping stars, follow-for-follow schemes, and mailing people at addresses scraped from profiles are outright violations, not a grey area.
What is left. The product itself: a clear README, a license, working examples, answers in issues. The platform also warns about email outreach: you may not use information from the service for spam, including sending unsolicited emails to users and selling personal data to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards.
Discussions inside your project are governed by you: the community guidelines explain that a conversation can be locked if it gets out of hand, drifts off topic, or violates the project's code of conduct.
GitHub has no built-in advertising system for external campaigns — none is described on the pages we checked.
Path to monetization
GitHub does not pay for publishing. The only documented channel through which money reaches an author is GitHub Sponsors: the platform explains that it lets the community financially support the people and organizations who design, build, and maintain open source projects directly on GitHub.
Eligibility: anyone who contributes to an open source project and lives in a supported region can take part; for organizations — anyone legally operating in a supported region. Contributions count beyond commits: bug reports, issue triage, documentation, mentoring, and design all qualify.
Fees. For personal accounts the platform promises no fee — 100% reaches the recipient; for organization accounts — up to 6%, of which 3% is card processing and 3% is GitHub's own fee, and an organization can remove the card portion by switching to invoicing. The list of supported countries and territories is published on the same page.
Tools and automation
Official programmatic access is the REST API and the GraphQL API. The limits are stated openly: 60 requests per hour without authentication; 5,000 requests per hour for a personal token; 15,000 per hour for a GitHub App owned by a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization; 1,000 requests per hour per repository for GITHUB_TOKEN in Actions.
Secondary limits matter more than the primary ones if you are building a service: no more than 100 concurrent requests; no more than 900 "points" per minute for REST and 2,000 per minute for GraphQL; no more than 80 content-creating requests per minute and no more than 500 per hour. That last ceiling is precisely what caps any scenario involving bulk creation of issues or comments.
The terms of service address API behavior separately: abuse or excessively frequent requests may lead to temporary or permanent suspension; you may not share tokens to work around the limits, and you may not scrape data through the API for spam purposes.
Building and publishing: Actions is included in the plan — 2,000 CI/CD minutes per month on Free, 3,000 on Team, 50,000 on Enterprise, and free for public repositories. Package registry: 500 MB on Free, 2 GB on Team, 50 GB on Enterprise.
Limits and rules
- Account. 13 and older, no more than one free account per person or legal entity, no registration by bots.
- Files. Warning from 50 MiB, blocked from 100 MiB, 25 MiB through the browser.
- Organization. 100,000 repositories; degraded interface and API above 100,000 members.
- Pages. 1 GB site, 100 GB of bandwidth per month, 10 builds per hour; commercial hosting prohibited.
- API. 60 / 5,000 / 15,000 requests per hour, 100 concurrent, 500 content-creating per hour.
- Content and conduct. No advertising in other people's accounts, no bulk automated or inauthentic activity, no activity done for rewards.
- Privacy. The platform states that it considers the contents of private repositories to be confidential, and lists the exceptions (security, support at your request, legal requirements).
Who it's for
A fit for products that have code behind them: libraries, SDKs, developer tools, infrastructure projects. This is where your audience goes looking for a solution to a problem, and whether you show up depends on whether your project actually solves it.
A fit for companies ready to take the public side seriously: an organization, maintained repositories, live answers in issues. This is not an ad channel with a budget, it is a commitment to respond.
Not a fit if you are counting on paid promotion or on organic reach "thanks to the algorithm" — the platform offers neither. Not a fit if the plan is to mention your product en masse in other people's discussions, inflate star counts, or run giveaways in exchange for follows: these are explicitly prohibited actions that get accounts blocked.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself this way: «Join the world's most widely adopted, AI-powered developer platform where millions of developers, businesses, and the largest open source community build software that advances humanity.»
Self-description: this is the platform's claim about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Who's here
the platform reports: «180 million-plus developers now work and build on GitHub» (more than 180 million developers)
The Octoverse 2025 report, published 28.10.2025. The platform's own measurement of its own accounts, not an independent estimate
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform reports: more than 36 million developers joined over the year, growth of 23 % year on year
Octoverse 2025
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform reports: 630 million repositories in total, of which 121 million are new in 2025
Octoverse 2025
source, checked 2026-07-28
the platform reports: 21.9 million developers in India; over the year India added more than 5 million, «a little over 14 %» of the total growth
Octoverse 2025; there is no full country table on the page
source, checked 2026-07-28
Account and access
you may use the service from the age of 13 (or an older age under local law); one person or legal entity may hold no more than one free account; registration by bots and other automated means is prohibited
A machine account is separately allowed under a human's responsibility
source, checked 2026-07-28
Business terms
an organization is a shared account for collaboration: roles, nested teams, cascading permissions; limited to owning 100 000 repositories; with more than 100 000 members part of the interface and the API may work worse
An organization is available on the free plan too
source, checked 2026-07-28
How the money works here
GitHub Sponsors is the only documented payout channel for an author: support for people and organizations creating open source projects; anyone who contributes and lives in a supported region can take part
Contributions also include bug reports, triaging issues, documentation, mentoring and design
source, checked 2026-07-28
Sponsors fees: 0 % for personal accounts (100 % reaches the recipient), up to 6 % for organizations - 3 % card processing and a 3 % GitHub fee; the card part can be removed by switching to invoicing
The minimum payout threshold and the payment methods are not named on the page
source, checked 2026-07-28
Pricing
Free - «$ 0 USD per month forever»; Team - «$ 4 USD per user/month»; Enterprise - «Starting at $ 21 USD per user/month»
The paid rates carry the caveat «for the first 12 months*»; the full text of the footnote with the standard price was not readable in the version of the page we checked
source, checked 2026-07-28
CI/CD minutes per month: Free - 2000, Team - 3000, Enterprise - 50 000; free for public repositories
The page's wording: «Free for public repositories»
source, checked 2026-07-28
Packages storage: Free - 500 MB, Team - 2 GB, Enterprise - 50 GB; free for public repositories
source, checked 2026-07-28
Limits and restrictions
a file larger than 50 MiB triggers a Git warning; through the browser you cannot upload a file larger than 25 MiB; files larger than 100 MiB are blocked
source, checked 2026-07-28
a repository is recommended to stay under 1 GB and strongly recommended to stay under 5 GB
A recommendation, not a hard limit
source, checked 2026-07-28
GitHub Pages: a published site no larger than 1 GB, the source repository recommended up to 1 GB, a soft traffic limit of 100 GB per month, a soft build limit of 10 per hour
source, checked 2026-07-28
Restrictions
using GitHub Pages as free hosting for an online store, a site aimed at commercial transactions or commercial SaaS is prohibited
source, checked 2026-07-28
the main content of what you publish must not be advertising or promotion; you may not advertise in other people's accounts by placing monetized or bulk content in issues
Acceptable use policy
source, checked 2026-07-28
excessive automated bulk activity and coordinated inauthentic activity are prohibited, including secondary markets for distributing it; activity encouraged by rewards - cryptocurrency airdrops, tokens, credits, gifts - is prohibited
This directly covers star inflation and mutual follows
source, checked 2026-07-28
using information from the service for spam is prohibited, including unsolicited emails to users and selling personal data to recruiters, headhunters and job boards
source, checked 2026-07-28
Legal
API abuse or excessively frequent requests may lead to temporary or permanent suspension; sharing tokens to get around limits and pulling data through the API for spam are prohibited
source, checked 2026-07-28
API access
primary REST API limits: 60 requests per hour without authentication, 5000 per hour for a personal token, 15 000 per hour for a GitHub Enterprise Cloud organization app, 1000 per hour per repository for GITHUB_TOKEN in Actions
source, checked 2026-07-28
secondary limits: no more than 100 concurrent requests; 900 points per minute for REST and 2000 per minute for GraphQL; 80 content-creating requests per minute and 500 per hour
The last ceiling limits bulk creation of issues and comments
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
home page interface language: en; language versions declared: de-de, en-us, fr-fr, ja, ko-kr, pt-br
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
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