With per-user pricing, organizations pay based on team size to access unlimited private repositories, and optionally, sophisticated user management and security features.

New organizations can build public and open-source projects on the free plan, or upgrade to a paid plan with per-user pricing.

Organizations using a paid plan before May 11, 2016 can choose to stay on their existing per-repository plan or switch to per-user pricing. There's not currently a timeline to switch to per-user pricing - you'll have at least twelve months' notice before any mandated change to your plan.

For more information on per-user billing options, see "Organization billing plans."

How many seats do I need for my organization?

Organization owners and members each fill a seat. If you've sent a pending invitation to a prospective organization member, the invitation will fill a seat.

Outside collaborators and bot accounts will count toward your organization's total of paid seats if they are given access to a private repository.

How can I add or downgrade my organization's paid seats?

You can add paid seats to your organization anytime. If you're paying for more seats than you're using, you can also remove paid seats from your organization.

If you have questions about your organization's billing plan, contact GitHub Support.

If I keep my organization on a per-repository plan, can I upgrade or downgrade to a different per-repository plan?

You can upgrade or downgrade between legacy paid plans in your organization's billing settings. When you upgrade to a plan with more private repositories, we'll immediately move your account to your new plan and bill you for the difference in price, prorated for the number of days left in your billing cycle.

When you downgrade to a paid plan with fewer private repositories, your new plan will take effect on your next billing date. If you have more private repositories than your new plan allows for, your private repositories will be locked when your new plan takes effect. To reduce your number of private repositories, you can make some of your private repositories public, or you can clone your private repositories locally and delete the copies on GitHub.

Further reading