Sponsor button not rendered although FUNDING.yml is detected by GitHub

[semihkiroglu]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Sponsors

Body

Hi,

I’m seeing an inconsistent GitHub Sponsors state on a public repository and I’m trying to determine whether this is a stale/cached repository state or a GitHub bug.

Repository:

semihkiroglu/pglogical-windows

Account:

semihkiroglu

My GitHub Sponsors profile has been approved and is public, with published tiers. The Sponsors page works normally.

Current state

The repository has this file on the default branch (main):

.github/FUNDING.yml

with:

github: semihkiroglu

The repository’s Settings → General → Features → Sponsorships option is enabled.

I also toggled Sponsorships off and back on once to see whether that would refresh the repository state.

Problem

Despite the above:

1. The repository page does not display a Sponsor button.

2. In Settings → General → Sponsorships, GitHub still shows:

   Set up sponsor button

   instead of recognizing the existing funding configuration.

3. Clicking Set up sponsor button opens the initial FUNDING.yml creation template as if the repository did not already contain the file.

4. If I try to commit from that flow, GitHub fails with:

   A file with the same name already exists. Please choose a different name and try again.

   So the repository contents layer clearly knows that .github/FUNDING.yml exists, while the Sponsorships settings UI appears to behave as though it does not.

Additional inconsistency

There is another interesting difference between GitHub surfaces:

• GitHub search indexes the repository as sponsorable: true, and the repository can show a Sponsor action from search results.
• The repository page payload, however, reports showSponsorButton: false.

So GitHub appears to detect the funding configuration in at least one backend/index, while the repository page and Sponsorships settings UI use a different or stale state.

For comparison, repositories with the same general setup, such as go-gitea/gitea, render showSponsorButton: true.

Things already checked

• GitHub Sponsors profile is approved and public.
• Sponsorship tiers are published.
• .github/FUNDING.yml exists on the default branch.
• The github entry contains the correct Sponsors username.
• Sponsorships is enabled in repository settings.
• Sponsorships was toggled off/on once.
• The funding file has been edited/committed again to trigger a refresh.
• I also tested a root-level FUNDING.yml temporarily, with no change. The intended file remains .github/FUNDING.yml.

Expected behavior

With:

• a public GitHub Sponsors profile,
• a valid .github/FUNDING.yml on the default branch, and
• Sponsorships enabled,

I would expect the repository page to render the Sponsor button and the repository settings UI to recognize the existing funding configuration.

Instead, different GitHub systems currently appear to disagree about whether sponsorship is configured.

Is there a known delay/cache for repository Sponsor-button state, or is there a way to force GitHub to rebuild/reset the Sponsorships state for a repository?

The strongest indication of an inconsistent state is that the setup UI attempts to create a new FUNDING.yml, but the commit operation then rejects it because that exact file already exists.

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[semihkiroglu]

It started working today, without any additional intervention to my knowledge.

[alexandrehtrb]

I am having the same problem, I've just setup sponsor on my repo with FUNDING.yml and sponsorship enabled, and the sponsor button is not visible.