About GitHub Advanced Security

GitHub has many features that help you improve and maintain the quality of your code. Some of these are included in all plans, such as dependency graph and Dependabot alerts. Other security features require a GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) license to run on repositories apart from public repositories on GitHub.com.

For information about how you can try GitHub Enterprise with GitHub Advanced Security for free, see "Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Cloud" and "Setting up a trial of GitHub Advanced Security" in the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

To purchase a GitHub Advanced Security license, you must be using GitHub Enterprise. For information about upgrading to GitHub Enterprise with GitHub Advanced Security, see "GitHub’s plans" and "About billing for GitHub Advanced Security."

Note

If you want to use GitHub Advanced Security with Azure Repos, see GitHub Advanced Security & Azure DevOps in our resources site. For documentation, see Configure GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps in Microsoft Learn.

About Advanced Security features

A GitHub Advanced Security license provides the following additional features for private repositories:

Code scanning - Search for potential security vulnerabilities and coding errors in your code using CodeQL or a third-party tool. See "About code scanning" and "About code scanning with CodeQL."
CodeQL CLI - Run CodeQL processes locally on software projects or to generate code scanning results for upload to GitHub. See "About the CodeQL CLI."
Secret scanning - Detect secrets, for example keys and tokens, that have been checked into private repositories. If push protection is enabled, GitHub also detects secrets when they are pushed to your repository. Secret scanning alerts for users and push protection are available and free of charge for all public repositories on GitHub.com. See "About secret scanning" and "About push protection."
Custom auto-triage rules - Help you manage your Dependabot alerts at scale. With custom auto-triage rules you have control over the alerts you want to ignore, snooze, or trigger a Dependabot security update for. For more information, see "About Dependabot alerts" and "Customizing auto-triage rules to prioritize Dependabot alerts."
Dependency review - Show the full impact of changes to dependencies and see details of any vulnerable versions before you merge a pull request. See "About dependency review."

The table below summarizes the availability of GitHub Advanced Security features for public and private repositories.

	Public repository	Private repository without Advanced Security	Private repository with Advanced Security
Code scanning
CodeQL CLI
Secret scanning
Custom auto-triage rules
Dependency review

For information about Advanced Security features that are in development, see "GitHub public roadmap." For an overview of all security features, see "GitHub security features."

GitHub Advanced Security features are enabled for all public repositories on GitHub.com. Organizations that use GitHub Enterprise Cloud with Advanced Security can additionally enable these features for private and internal repositories. See the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.