About billing for GitHub Advanced Security
If you want to use GitHub Advanced Security features on any repository apart from a public repository on GitHub.com, you will need a GitHub Advanced Security license, available with GitHub Enterprise Cloud or GitHub Enterprise Server. For more information about GitHub Advanced Security, see "About GitHub Advanced Security."
Each license for GitHub Advanced Security specifies a maximum number of accounts, or seats, that can use these features. Each active committer to at least one repository with the feature enabled uses one seat. A committer is considered active if one of their commits has been pushed to the repository within the last 90 days, regardless of when it was originally authored.
Note: Active committers are calculated using both the commit author information and the timestamp for when the code was pushed to GitHub.
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When a user pushes code to GitHub, every user who authored code in that push counts towards GitHub Advanced Security seats, even if the code is not new to GitHub.
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Users should always create branches from a recent base, or rebase them before pushing. This will ensure that users who have not committed in the last 90 days do not take up GitHub Advanced Security seats.
To discuss licensing GitHub Advanced Security for your enterprise, contact GitHub's Sales team.
About committer numbers for GitHub Advanced Security
We record and display two numbers of committers for GitHub Advanced Security on GitHub.com:
- Committers is the number of committers who contributed to at least one private repository in an organization and who use a seat in your enterprise license. That is, they are also an organization member, an external collaborator, or have a pending invitation to join an organization in your enterprise.
- Unique to this repository/organization is the number of committers who contributed only to this repository, or to repositories in this organization. This number shows how many license seats you can free up by disabling GitHub Advanced Security for that repository or organization.
If there are no unique committers, all active committers also contribute to other repositories or organizations that use GitHub Advanced Security. Disabling the feature for that repository or organization would not free any seats on your license.
When you remove a user from your enterprise account, the user's license is freed within 24 hours.
Note: Users can contribute to multiple repositories or organizations. Usage is measured across the whole enterprise account to ensure that each member uses one seat regardless of how many repositories or organizations the user contributes to.
When you enable or disable Advanced Security for repositories, GitHub displays an overview of changes to the use of your license. If you disable access to GitHub Advanced Security, any seats used by "unique" committers are freed up.
If you are over your license limit, GitHub Advanced Security continues to work on all repositories where it is already enabled. However, in organizations where GitHub Advanced Security is enabled for new repositories, repositories will be created with the feature disabled. In addition, the option to enable GitHub Advanced Security for existing repositories will not be available. If you change the visibility of a public repository to private then GitHub Advanced Security will be disabled for that repository.
As soon as you free up some seats, by disabling GitHub Advanced Security for some repositories or by increasing your license size, the options for enabling GitHub Advanced Security will work again as normal.
You can enforce policies to allow or disallow the use of Advanced Security by organizations owned by your enterprise account. For more information, see "Enforcing policies for Advanced Security in your enterprise" in the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.
For more information on viewing license usage, see "Viewing your GitHub Advanced Security usage."
Understanding active committer usage
The following example timeline demonstrates how active committer count for GitHub Advanced Security could change over time in an enterprise. For each month, you will find events, along with the resulting committer count.
| Date | Events during the month | Total committers |
|---|---|---|
| A member of your enterprise enables GitHub Advanced Security for repository X. Repository X has 50 committers over the past 90 days. | 50 | |
| Developer A leaves the team working on repository X. Developer A's contributions continue to count for 90 days. | 50 | |
| Developer A's contributions no longer count towards the licences required, because 90 days have passed. | 50 - 1 49 | |
| A member of your enterprise enables GitHub Advanced Security for a second repository, repository Y. In the last 90 days, a total of 20 developers contributed to that repository. Of those 20 developers, 10 also recently worked on repo X and do not require additional licenses. | 49 + 10 59 | |
| A member of your enterprise disables GitHub Advanced Security for repository X. Of the 49 developers who were working on repository X, 10 still also work on repository Y, which has a total of 20 developers contributing in the last 90 days. | 49 - 29 20 |
Note: A user will be flagged as active when their commits are pushed to any branch of a repository, even if the commits were authored more than 90 days ago.
Getting the most out of GitHub Advanced Security
When you decide which repositories and organizations to prioritize for GitHub Advanced Security, you should review them and identify:
- Codebases that are the most critical to your company's success. These are the projects for which the introduction of vulnerable code, hard-coded secrets, or vulnerable dependencies would have the greatest impact on your company.
- Codebases with the highest commit frequency. These are the most actively developed projects, consequently there is a higher risk that security problems could be introduced.
When you have enabled GitHub Advanced Security for these organizations or repositories, assess which other codebases you could add without incurring billing for unique committers. Finally, review the remaining important and busy codebases. If you want to increase the number of seats in your license, contact GitHub's Sales team.
