$ ~/cicdcalculator

Is GitHub Actions free?
./yes-with-limits --free-tier --2026

By Oliver Wakefield-Smith, Founder, Digital Signet·Verified June 2026
Direct answer

Yes, GitHub Actions is free, with limits. On public repositories and personal accounts it is completely free and unlimited. On private repositories the Free plan includes 2,000 Linux minutes per month plus 500 MB of artifact storage. Run past that and you either upgrade (Team is $4/user/month for 3,000 minutes, Enterprise $21/user for 50,000) or pay $0.006 per extra Linux 2-core minute. Windows minutes drain the quota twice as fast and macOS minutes ten times as fast.

Public repos
Unlimited
Private Free tier
2,000 Linux min/mo
Free storage
500 MB
Overage (Linux 2-core)
$0.006 / min

What the free tier includes

Every GitHub plan ships with an Actions allowance. The Free plan is enough for solo developers and small private projects; teams that run more than a couple of pipelines a day usually exceed it within the month.

PlanSeatFree Linux minutes / moFree storagePublic repos
Free$02,000500 MBUnlimited
Team$4 / user3,0002 GBUnlimited
Enterprise$21 / user50,00050 GBUnlimited

Free-tier allowances per docs.github.com (about billing for GitHub Actions), verified June 2026. Included minutes are per account, not per user.

What counts against your free minutes

The 2,000-minute allowance is measured in Linux-equivalent minutes. Windows and macOS jobs are multiplied before they are deducted, so they eat the free tier far faster than the wall-clock time suggests.

RunnerMultiplierFree minutes you actually getOverage rate
Linux 2-core1x2,000$0.006 / min
Windows 2-core2x1,000$0.010 / min
macOS 3/4-core10x200$0.062 / min

Multipliers deduct from the free quota; overage rates are the post-January-2026 all-in meter prices and include the $0.002/min platform charge. Source: docs.github.com, verified June 2026.

When do you start paying?

Solo dev, public OSS
Never
Public repositories are unlimited. You can run macOS, Windows and Linux jobs all day for $0.
Small private team (5 devs)
~Day 12
30 Linux builds/day x 8 min = ~5,000 min/mo. The 2,000 Free minutes run out around the 12th, then Team's 3,000 covers the rest, with a small overage.
iOS team on hosted macOS
~Day 2
200 effective macOS minutes is roughly ten 20-minute builds. iOS teams blow past the free tier almost immediately and usually self-host a Mac mini.

A brand-new Free account has a $0 spending limit by default, so once you exhaust the included minutes your private-repo jobs simply stop until the next monthly reset, rather than running up a surprise bill. You have to raise the spending limit deliberately before any overage is charged.

Keep going

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Frequently Asked Questions

# click any question to expand

Is GitHub Actions free?>
Yes, with limits. GitHub Actions is completely free and unlimited on public repositories and for personal accounts. On private repositories the Free plan includes 2,000 Linux minutes per month plus 500 MB of artifact storage. Once you pass that allowance you either move to a paid plan or pay per minute: $0.006 for a Linux 2-core minute since the January 2026 rate cut.
How many free GitHub Actions minutes do you get per month?>
On private repositories: 2,000 Linux minutes per month on the Free plan, 3,000 on Team ($4/user/month), and 50,000 on Enterprise ($21/user/month). On public repositories the standard GitHub-hosted runners are free with no minute cap. The included minutes are measured in Linux-equivalent minutes, so Windows and macOS jobs drain the quota faster.
Do Windows and macOS minutes count the same as Linux?>
No. GitHub deducts Windows minutes at 2x and macOS minutes at 10x against your included quota. So a 2,000 Linux-minute Free allowance is only 1,000 Windows minutes or 200 macOS minutes if you run those runners exclusively. This is why iOS teams, which must build on macOS, exhaust the free tier almost immediately.
Is GitHub Actions free for public repositories?>
Yes, and this is unlimited. Public-repository workflows running on standard GitHub-hosted Linux, Windows and macOS runners are free on every plan, including Free. The fair-use policy reserves the right to throttle abuse, but for an honest open-source project there is no practical minute limit. The 2,000-minute cap only applies to private repositories.
When do you start paying for GitHub Actions?>
You start paying the moment a private-repository workflow pushes you past your plan's included minutes (2,000 Free, 3,000 Team, 50,000 Enterprise) or past your 500 MB / 2 GB / 50 GB storage allowance. Overage is metered per minute (Linux 2-core $0.006, Windows $0.010, macOS $0.062) and per GB-month of storage ($0.25). By default a Free account has a $0 spending limit, so jobs simply stop rather than bill you until you raise it.
What changed about the GitHub Actions free tier in 2026?>
The free allowances (2,000 Linux minutes, 500 MB storage on Free) are unchanged. What changed is the overage price: on 1 January 2026 GitHub cut hosted-runner rates by up to 39%, so the Linux 2-core rate you pay after the free tier dropped from $0.008 to $0.006 per minute, Windows from $0.016 to $0.010, and macOS from $0.080 to $0.062. The listed rates already include the $0.002/min Actions cloud platform charge.
How do I avoid going over the free tier?>
Cache dependencies (actions/cache for npm, pip, gradle and Docker layers often turns a 6-minute install into 30 seconds), skip jobs with paths filters so backend-only PRs do not run frontend tests, keep macOS work off hosted runners where you can, and shorten artifact retention from the default 90 days to 7-14 days to stay inside the 500 MB storage quota. Caching alone commonly cuts billable minutes 30-50 percent.