GitHub made private repos free for everyone and halved its entry price to $4
In April 2020 GitHub scrapped pay-for-privacy — unlimited private repos and collaborators went free, and the paid tier halved from $9 to $4 per seat.
What was changed
On April 14, 2020, GitHub announced sweeping changes to its plans: unlimited repositories and collaborators became part of the free tier, even for private projects. Previously, unlimited free repositories applied only to public projects or very small teams, which precluded whole categories of companies and organizations from ever using the free tier.
The paid ladder was rebuilt around features instead: the entry tier dropped from $9 to $4 per user per month, a $21 tier added SAML sign-on with expanded storage and actions, and high-value customers got individually negotiated GitHub One. The key remaining difference between free and paid was code owners and required reviewers — the things institutions need.
CEO Nat Friedman told TechCrunch the change heralded a shift from a "pay-for-privacy" model to a "pay-for-features" one, in the works since Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. He dismissed the guess that COVID remote work triggered it — "this is something we planned to do and have wanted to do for a long time" — and set an ambitious target: growing from 40 million developers to 100 million by 2025.
Why it worked
The privacy paywall capped the platform's reach, and developer reach is the asset a tools company compounds on.
Microsoft's ownership removed the need for GitHub to monetize privacy, freeing pricing to chase adoption.
Organizations pay for governance — code owners, required reviewers, SAML — so institutions still had a reason to upgrade.
Competition for developers was stronger than ever, and free private repos removed the last reason to start elsewhere.
What can be applied
When ownership removes the revenue emergency, give away what gates adoption and charge for what gates institutions — features, not privacy.
Aftermath
The new pricing went into effect for all paying users the same day the announcement was made. Friedman framed the 40-to-100-million developer target as ambitious given the competitive field, with the model now resting on organizational features rather than the free-versus-private distinction that had defined GitHub's tiers since its early years.