Teams tier billing for read-only users

[FJCarvajal]

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I'm evaluating GitHub pricing tiers for my organization and need clarification on billing for private repositories. According to GitHub Copilot, users with read-only access to private repositories don't count towards Teams plan billing - only users with write or admin access would count. However, I haven't been able to find any official documentation confirming this.

I've already reached out to GitHub Support for clarification, but I thought I'd ask here as well in case anyone can point me to official documentation or share their experience with this specific billing aspect.

[ghost]

Hi there!

I looked into your question about billing under the GitHub Teams plan. Honestly, the official documentation doesn’t give a clear answer stating that users with read-only access to private repositories are excluded from billing. Everywhere it says that billing applies to anyone who has access to private repos — without distinguishing between read, write, or admin access levels. Looks like Copilot might’ve over-simplified things, or perhaps confused it with something like GitHub Advanced Security, where only code contributors are counted.

In GitHub's pricing documentation (for example, the About per-user pricing page on GitHub Docs), it says that under the Teams plan, billing is applied to "each member or outside collaborator" who has access to private or internal repositories within the organization. Specifically:

Billing is based on the number of licensed seats, which includes organization members and outside collaborators with access to private repositories.

The documentation doesn’t distinguish between access levels (read-only, write, admin) in the context of billing — the key factor is simply whether the user has access.

Here’s a quote from the docs:

“GitHub bills for the following accounts: Enterprise owners who are a member or owner of at least one organization in the enterprise, outside collaborators on private or internal repositories owned by your organization (excluding forks), and dormant users who are a member or owner of at least one organization in the enterprise.”

So, it looks like any access to a private repository — read, write, or admin — will count toward the seat count, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

If you invite an external user with read-only access — they’ll take up a license seat.
If a team member has read-only access — they’ll still count toward your total.

If I were you, I’d wait for a response from GitHub Support — they’ll give you the definitive answer based on your org's case. In the meantime, you can check your org’s billing settings to see how many seats are currently in use, and even test it out by adding a read-only user if possible.