About GitHub Sponsors for open source contributors

If you provide value to an open source project, you can become a sponsored contributor to receive payments for your work.

In this article

Joining GitHub Sponsors

Anyone who contributes to an open source project and lives in a supported region is eligible to become a sponsored developer. Contributions include but are not limited to bug reports, issue triage, code, documentation, leadership, business development, project management, mentorship, and design. If you live in a region that isn't already supported by GitHub Sponsors, you can sign up for the waitlist to participate in GitHub Sponsors. For more information, see "Setting up GitHub Sponsors for your personal account."

Any organization that contributes to an open source project and legally operates in a supported region is eligible to become a sponsored organization. If your organization operates in a region that isn't already supported by GitHub Sponsors, join the waitlist at GitHub Sponsors. For more information, see "Setting up GitHub Sponsors for your organization."

After you join GitHub Sponsors, you can add a sponsor button to the open source repository you contribute to, to increase the visibility of your GitHub Sponsors profile and other funding platforms. For more information, see "Displaying a sponsor button in your repository."

You can set a goal for your sponsorships. For more information, see "Managing your sponsorship goal."

GitHub may contact GitHub Sponsors applicants or participants for additional information regarding their sponsorship profile or activity to determine eligibility for sponsorship or matching, or as part of investigating potential terms violations.

Sponsorship tiers

You can publish up to 10 one-time sponsorship tiers and 10 monthly tiers for sponsors to choose from. Each tier has its own one-time or monthly payment amount in US dollars. Publishing tiers is optional.

You can customize the rewards for each tier. For example, rewards for a tier could include:

  • Early access to new versions
  • Logo or name in README
  • Weekly newsletter updates
  • Other rewards your sponsors would enjoy ✨

You can give all sponsors in a tier access to a private repository by adding the repository to the tier. For more information, see "Managing your sponsorship tiers."

You can include a welcome message with information about accessing or receiving rewards, which will be visible after payment and in the welcome email.

Once you have published a tier, you cannot edit the price of that tier. Instead, you must retire the tier and create a new tier. Existing sponsors will remain on the retired tier until they change their sponsorship tier, cancel their sponsorship, or their one-time sponsorship period expires. For more information, see "Setting up GitHub Sponsors for your personal account," "Setting up GitHub Sponsors for your organization," and "Managing your sponsorship tiers."

It's best to set up a range of different sponsorship options, including monthly and one-time tiers, to make it easy for anyone to support your work. In particular, one-time payments allow people to reward your efforts without worrying about whether their finances will support a regular payment schedule.

Sponsorship payouts

GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization. GitHub Sponsors charges a fee of up to 6% for sponsorships from organization accounts. The 6% fee is split between the following:

  • 3% credit card processing fee
  • 3% GitHub service processing fee

Organizations can save the 3% credit card processing fee by switching to invoiced billing for sponsorships. For more information, see "Paying for GitHub Sponsors by invoice."

For information about timing for payments from GitHub Sponsors, see "GitHub Sponsors Additional Terms."

For more information, see "Managing your payouts from GitHub Sponsors."

Sharing feedback about GitHub Sponsors

You can share your feedback about GitHub Sponsors with GitHub. To join the conversation, see "Sponsors Feedback."

Further reading