Usage limits, billing, and administration

About billing for GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions help you automate your software development workflows in the same place you store code and collaborate on pull requests and issues. You can write individual tasks, called actions, and combine them to create a custom workflow. For more information, see Understanding GitHub Actions and About GitHub Actions for enterprises.

GitHub Actions usage is free for GitHub Enterprise Server instances that use self-hosted runners. For more information, see About self-hosted runners.

Usage limits

Usage limits apply to self-hosted runners. For more information, see About self-hosted runners.

Billing for reusable workflows

If you reuse a workflow, billing is always associated with the caller workflow. Assignment of GitHub-hosted runners is always evaluated using only the caller's context. The caller cannot use GitHub-hosted runners from the called repository.

For more information see, Reusing workflows.

Artifact and log retention policy

You can configure the artifact and log retention period for your repository, organization, or enterprise account.

By default, the artifacts and log files generated by workflows are retained for 90 days before they are automatically deleted. You can change this retention period to anywhere between 1 day or 400 days.

When you customize the retention period, it only applies to new artifacts and log files, and does not retroactively apply to existing objects. For managed repositories and organizations, the maximum retention period cannot exceed the limit set by the managing organization or enterprise.

For more information, see:

• Managing GitHub Actions settings for a repository
• Configuring the retention period for GitHub Actions artifacts and logs in your organization
• Enforcing policies for GitHub Actions in your enterprise

Workflow run history retention policy

The workflow runs in a repository's workflow run history are retained for 400 days. After 400 days, workflow runs are archived. 10 days after archival, they are permanently deleted. The retention period for workflow runs cannot be modified. For more information, see "Viewing workflow run history."

Disabling or limiting GitHub Actions for your repository or organization

By default, after GitHub Actions is enabled on GitHub Enterprise Server, it is enabled on all repositories and organizations. You can choose to disable GitHub Actions or limit it to actions in your enterprise.

You can also manage GitHub Actions settings for your enterprise, such as workflow permissions and cache storage.

For more information, see:

• Managing GitHub Actions settings for a repository
• Disabling or limiting GitHub Actions for your organization
• Enforcing policies for GitHub Actions in your enterprise

Disabling and enabling workflows

You can enable and disable individual workflows in your repository on GitHub.

To prevent unnecessary workflow runs, scheduled workflows may be disabled automatically. When a public repository is forked, scheduled workflows are disabled by default. In a public repository, scheduled workflows are automatically disabled when no repository activity has occurred in 60 days.

For more information, see Disabling and enabling a workflow.