GitHub cuts subscription price by more than half and opens up free tier to private developers

GitHub, the Microsoft-owned software hosting site, said on Tuesday it will reduce prices on one of its most popular paid tiers and also moving a key feature of all its paid plans into its existing free tier. Now, GitHub says the “Teams” subscription, which previously cost $9 per user a month, will now be $4 per user a month. All existing paid customers on the plan will move to the new pricing model starting today.

And for those who want to use GitHub for private development but didn’t want to pay the per-user price, the company now says you’ll be able to sign up for the free version of GitHub and access that feature for the first time. That will now grant you access to unlimited collaborators on private repositories, something that used to require you pay for one of GitHub’s subscriptions.

Prior to this change, the free model of GitHub gave you unlimited repositories so long as they were public — effectively ensuring the platform’s free plan couldn’t be used by a startup or a small company — while the $7 per month Pro plan added unlimited collaborators and a few other perks while maintaining the public requirement. Beyond the Free, Pro, and Team tiers, GitHub sells an Enterprise and an even more feature-rich GitHub One plan with special pricing (typically negotiated by sales teams) for large companies and organizations.

“We’re happy to announce that we’re making private repositories with unlimited collaborators available to all GitHub accounts. All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone,” the company said in its announcement. “ Until now, if your organization wanted to use GitHub for private development, you had to subscribe to one of our paid plans. But every developer on earth should have access to GitHub. Price shouldn’t be a barrier.”