Home How Does GitHub Make Money? Complete Guide

How Does GitHub Make Money? Complete Guide

How does GitHub make money? Here is a complete review of the revenue streams and the various products and services they offer, how it works, the company’s revenue over the past year, and the revenue generated by the company. 

Engineers can manage projects on GitHub, which allows them to manage projects online. A San Francisco, California-based company, GitHub is the most popular online collaboration tool for everything software-related. 

As an online collaboration tool for all things software, it was founded in 2008, and Microsoft acquired the company for 7.5 billion dollars in 2018.

How To Earn From Github?

Developers can use GitHub to store, edit, and track changes made to their coding projects. According to its name, GitHub is built on Git and version control. Version control consists of keeping track of changes to a file that have been made over time.

Version control systems used to be hosted locally on the developer’s computer. It is complicated to navigate and synchronize all changes to a codebase. Because of the localized approach, especially in a project with multiple developers.

The concept of distributed version control has become increasingly popular within development teams over the past few years. Every developer’s working file serves as a repository by itself, rather than synchronizing all projects on one central repository. 

Each party then exchanges patches to synchronize their working files. Multiple versions control systems, including Git, can do this distributed synchronization. Linus Torvalds developed a software program in 2005.

How Does GitHub Make Money?

GitHub functions primarily as a hosting platform as a collaborative version control platform. One of GitHub’s best features is its simplicity of use, and it offers a simple user interface that lets you start collaborating right away.

Even non-technical folks like authors can collaborate on books using the platform since it is easy to navigate. The platform is also highly customizable, which is another significant advantage. GitHub’s marketplace allows users to add third-party tools like Slack and Trello.

GitHub also provides a host of educational materials and events and an online forum that keeps its community informed of the best practices of collaboration.

More than 50 million users have used the platform to create more than 100 million repositories. GitHub now manages workflows for over 2.9 million organizations around the world.

A Short History Of GitHub

In 2008, P J Hyett, Chris Wanstrath, and Tom Preston-Werner founded the company in San Francisco. The four founders of GitHub spent significant amounts of time in the corporate world as software developers before starting GitHub.

Founders became frustrated with large businesses’ slowness, bureaucracy, and autonomy. Preston-Werner sold Gravatar to Automattic in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. Afterwards, he joined Powerset, a natural language search engine, San Francisco.

Preston-Werner and the team turned into GitHub in a local bar in San Francisco. After a few months, the trio, soon joined by Hyett, began working on the GitHub platform. GitHub went into private beta in January 2008, and the developer friends were the only ones who could use the platform initially.

How To Make Money With Github?

GitHub was finally launched to the public in April 2008, a few months later. Preston-Werner decided to bootstrap their business due to its financial struggles. Preston-Werner was wanted by the Seattle-based tech giant, who even offered him $300,000 as a signing bonus.

It was easy for him to decline the offer because GitHub had already proven a great company. The founding team generated over $1,000 in revenue on launch day itself.

No other investment thesis fits Andreessen’s investment thesis better than GitHub’s. In 2011, Marc Andreessen, one of its founders, famously said, Software eats the world. This statement is attributed to GitHub.

In addition to the funding, GitHub employed the workforce to deal with the lengthy sales cycles associated with corporate sales.

GitHub reorganized its executive team significantly at the beginning of 2014. Former CEO Preston-Werner becomes GitHub’s Executive President.

Microsoft acquired the company for a whopping $7.5 billion in stock. Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub marked a significant shift in its strategic direction.

Fortunately for its users, the opposite occurred. Nathan Friedman, who replaced Wanstrath as GitHub’s new CEO, kept the company’s developer-first ethos.

In 2019, the company announced that its free users could create unlimited private repositories. After the announcement, private repositories were accessible for all teams, mainly benefiting early-stage software founders.

The Chinese government decided to create its version of GitHub, which indicates the importance of GitHub in the software world. In Gitee, Chinese engineers will port many of their code over to the mainland in this platform.

Over 50 million people use GitHub’s platform today. More than 2,000 employees work in eight offices around the globe.

Can You Make Money From Github?

As of September 2021, the GitHub platform has more than 56 million users. GitHub Education serves more than one million teachers, students, and schools, including UC Berkeley and Harvard.

GitHub earns revenue through subscriptions and third-party app sales. Below, we’ll examine each separately.

How Do I View My Subscriptions On Github?

Individuals and teams can choose from four different subscription plans at GitHub. Users can choose from free, team, enterprise, or GitHub One.

According to its name, the Free plan is available for free. The program is designed for individual users or small developers who do not need many features or storage capabilities.

GitHub’s premium plans allow users to scale their projects. They include:

  • Costs $4 per month per user for Team
  • Enterprise plans cost $21 per month per user
  • You can request pricing from GitHub upon request.

The premium plans offer users additional repository storage, workflow automation minutes, secure logins, and dedicated support.

When users or teams exceed certain plan limitations, GitHub generates additional revenue. The extra charge for every gigabyte that you exceed in your repository storage, for example, is $0.25.

How Do Teachers Use Github?

Students, teachers, and schools benefit from GitHub Education’s simplified approach to learning and teaching. According to GitHub, more than 1 million teachers and students have used GitHub for education since its launch in 2016.

Harvard and UC Berkeley are two of the most notable universities using the service. GitHub offers many services in this space, such as student training and the GitHub Classroom for teachers.

How Do I Access My Github Education Pack?

  • Get a 25% discount on GitHub Enterprise licenses for schools and universities
  • $50k per year for University Unlimited.

What Is The Github Marketplace?

GitHub’s Marketplace allows users to download and use third-party apps. The apps are designed to enhance GitHub’s platform. 

App examples include software development graphical user interfaces, image optimization tools, task boards, and many others. The paid tools on GitHub generate revenue every time a user opts in. 

How Does Microsoft Make Money From Github?

The company’s financing has come from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Thrive Capital, etc. According to Microsoft, the company is valued at $7.5 billion. For now, GitHub does not disclose how it values its business.

Microsoft acquired GitHub for a 25x multiple of the company’s revenue at the acquisition time. GitHub’s annual revenue in 2018 was about $300. GitHub’s revenue numbers are not included in Microsoft’s quarterly and annual filings.