Automating usage reporting with the REST API

You can automatically pull data from GitHub to populate the business systems you use to monitor costs and usage using the REST API. If you haven't used the GitHub REST API before, see Using the REST API.

Overview of endpoints

You need to use different endpoints to gather data depending on your account type and the information level you want.

Getting premium request consumption

1. Authenticate with GitHub with one of the following methods:

   • GitHub CLI: use the gh auth login command to authenticate, see GitHub CLI quickstart.
   • Create a personal access token (classic): and pass the token to in your API call, see Creating a personal access token (classic).

2. Call the required premium_request/usage endpoint, specifying the enterprise, organization, or user that you want data for.

To download other metrics for GitHub Copilot, see Analyzing usage over time with the GitHub Copilot metrics API.

Getting usage data for all paid products

1. Authenticate with GitHub with one of the following methods:

   • GitHub CLI: use the gh auth login command to authenticate, see GitHub CLI quickstart.
   • Create a personal access token (classic): and pass the token to in your API call, see Creating a personal access token (classic).

2. Call the required usage endpoint, specifying the enterprise, organization, or user that you want data for.

3. By default, data for all products for the current year is reported. For enterprises, only data that is not associated with a cost center is reported.

   You can request more specific data using query parameters.

   • Specify time period by setting one or more of the following parameters: year, month, day, and hour.
   • Specify a cost center to report on by identifier using the cost_center_id query parameter (enterprise endpoint only).

For more detailed information and an example calls and responses, see:

• Get billing usage report for an enterprise
• Get billing usage report for an organization
• Get billing usage report for a user

Migrating from the endpoints used for the previous billing platform

After you transition to metered billing, the endpoints you used to get data from the previous billing platform will no longer return accurate usage information.

• Upgrade all calls of the form: /ACCOUNT-TYPE/NAME/settings/billing/PRODUCT
• To use the equivalent: /ACCOUNT-TYPE/NAME/settings/billing/usage endpoint

Changes in authentication

If you used a fine-grained personal access token to authenticate with the previous endpoints, you will need create a personal access token (classic) to authenticate with the new endpoint.

In addition, you may want to use the new query parameters to specify a time period or cost center.

Calculating GitHub Actions information from the new response data

Example of the previous response

{"total_minutes_used": 305, "total_paid_minutes_used": 0, "included_minutes": 3000, "minutes_used_breakdown": { "UBUNTU": 205, "MACOS": 10, "WINDOWS": 90 }  }

Example of the new response

{ "usageItems": [ { "date": "2023-08-01", "product": "Actions", "sku": "Actions Linux", "quantity": 100, "unitType": "minutes", "pricePerUnit": 0.008, "grossAmount": 0.8, "discountAmount": 0, "netAmount": 0.8, "organizationName": "GitHub", "repositoryName": "github/example"} ] }

To get the same values from the new response data:

Calculating GitHub Packages information from the new response data

Example of the previous response

{ "total_gigabytes_bandwidth_used": 50, "total_paid_gigabytes_bandwidth_used": 40, "included_gigabytes_bandwidth": 10 }

Example of the new response

{ "usageItems": [ { "date": "2023-08-01", "product": "Packages", "sku": "Packages data transfer", "quantity": 100, "unitType": "gigabytes", "pricePerUnit": 0.008, "grossAmount": 0.8, "discountAmount": 0, "netAmount": 0.8, "organizationName": "GitHub", "repositoryName": "github/example" } ] }

Calculating shared storage information from the new response data

Example of the previous response

{ "days_left_in_billing_cycle": 20, "estimated_paid_storage_for_month": 15, "estimated_storage_for_month": 40 }

Example of the new response

{ "usageItems": [ { "date": "2023-08-01", "product": "Packages", "sku": "Packages storage", "quantity": 100, "unitType": "GigabyteHours", "pricePerUnit": 0.008, "grossAmount": 0.8, "discountAmount": 0, "netAmount": 0.8, "organizationName": "GitHub", "repositoryName": "github/example" } ] }