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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-03-15. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Enabling automatic user license sync for your enterprise

In this article

You can manage license usage across your GitHub Enterprise environments by automatically syncing user licenses from your GitHub Enterprise Server instance to GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Who can use this feature

Enterprise owners can enable automatic user license synchronization.

About automatic license synchronization

GitHub uses a unique-user licensing model. For enterprise products that include multiple deployment options, GitHub determines how many licensed seats you're consuming based on the number of unique users across all your deployments.

Each user only consumes one license, no matter how many GitHub Enterprise Server instances the user uses, or how many organizations the user is a member of on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. This model allows each person to use multiple GitHub Enterprise deployments without incurring extra costs.

For a person using multiple GitHub Enterprise environments to only consume a single license, you must synchronize license usage between environments. Then, GitHub will deduplicate users based on the email addresses associated with their user accounts. For more information, see "Troubleshooting license usage for GitHub Enterprise." For more information, see "About GitHub Connect."

If you enable automatic user license sync for your enterprise, GitHub Connect will automatically synchronize license usage between GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud weekly.

If you use multiple GitHub Enterprise Server instances, you can enable automatic license sync between each of your instances and the same enterprise account on GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

After you synchronize license usage, you can see a report of consumed licenses across all your environments in the enterprise settings on GitHub.com. For more information, see "Viewing license usage for GitHub Enterprise."

You can also manually upload GitHub Enterprise Server user license information to GitHub Enterprise Cloud. For more information, see "Syncing license usage between GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud."

Note: If you synchronize license usage and your enterprise account on GitHub.com does not use Enterprise Managed Users, we highly recommend enabling verified domains for your enterprise account on GitHub.com. For privacy reasons, your consumed license report only includes the email address associated with a user account on GitHub.com if the address is hosted by a verified domain. If one person is erroneously consuming multiple licenses, having access to the email address that is being used for deduplication makes troubleshooting much easier. For more information, see "Verifying or approving a domain for your enterprise" and "About Enterprise Managed Users" in the GitHub Enterprise Cloud documentation.

Enabling license synchronization

Before enabling license synchronization on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, you must enable GitHub Connect. For more information, see "Managing GitHub Connect."

  1. In the top-right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click GitHub Connect.

  3. To the right of "License sync", click Enable.

    Screenshot of the "License sync" option on the GitHub Connect page. The "Enable" button is highlighted with an orange outline.