GitHub Actions artifact uploads blocked on Free plan — request for quota review

[mahdighashghaei]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Discussion Details

Hello GitHub Actions community,

I'm experiencing a persistent artifact upload quota error on my GitHub Free account and would appreciate help determining whether this is expected behavior or whether my account's storage usage needs to be reviewed.

Error:
Failed to CreateArtifact: Artifact storage quota has been hit. Unable to upload any new artifacts. Usage is recalculated every 6-12 hours.

The build completes successfully, but the workflow fails when actions/upload-artifact@v6 attempts to upload frontend-production.tar.gz.

What I've checked so far:

• Deleted previously stored workflow artifacts.
• Queried the repository's artifact API; it currently returns no artifacts.
• Checked the accessible package inventories; no packages were found.
• Reviewed the billing dashboard, which shows the included Actions storage allowance as fully used.
• The billing usage report later showed a significant drop in daily storage usage, but artifact uploads remain blocked.

I'm on GitHub Free and do not have a payment method configured. I would prefer not to upgrade or enable paid usage just to resolve this issue.

My questions:

1. Is artifact upload blocking expected to continue until the next billing-cycle reset, even after deleting existing artifacts?
2. Is there a way to verify the account's actual accumulated storage usage and reset date?
3. If the reported usage and actual stored artifacts do not match, can GitHub review or reconcile the quota?

Any clarification or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Sagargupta16]

Yes to your first question: the block stays until the period resets on 2026-11-01 at 00:00 UTC, and deleting artifacts cannot lift it earlier.

The reason is how the quota is measured. Actions storage is billed on an hourly accrual model: every hour, the bytes stored that hour are added to a running total for the billing period, and the included 500 MB is converted to the same unit (0.5 GB x 744 h = 372 GB-hours for October). Once the accrued total passes that, uploads are blocked. The docs spell out the consequence of deleting: "Storage already accrued during the current billing cycle remains in your total". That is why your usage report shows a drop in daily storage while the upload still fails. The "recalculated every 6-12 hours" note is about the display, not the accrued total.

For your second question: Settings > Billing and licensing > Usage. Switch to the metered usage view, filter Product to Actions and group by SKU to see "Actions storage" in GB-hours for the month. The reset is the metered billing period, which the docs define as starting "at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each month".

Third question: if the Usage view shows storage accrued earlier in October, there is nothing to reconcile and Support will say the same. If it shows nothing at all, open a ticket at https://support.github.com/request with the account name and the error text.

Until November 1, skip the upload-artifact step (or attach the tarball to a release instead), and your builds pass again.

[Armen5570]

GitHub Actions artifact storage is measured using accumulated storage usage over the billing period, so deleting existing artifacts may not immediately restore your upload quota.

Check Settings → Billing and licensing → Usage and review the Actions storage usage for the current billing period. If the usage still appears incorrect after the reporting period updates, contact GitHub Support with the exact error message.

If you want to avoid enabling paid usage, you can temporarily skip the artifact upload step in your workflow and keep the build and test jobs running. You can also review the official GitHub Actions billing documentation to understand the included storage limits.

Official documentation: https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-actions