What Is GitHub? A Beginner’s Overview

Over 150 million developers use the same platform to build, share, and ship code. If you’ve ever wondered what is GitHub, you’re asking about the single largest code hosting service in the world, and the place where most open source software lives.

GitHub is more than a repository hosting platform. It’s where teams run pull requests, automate builds, track issues, and review each other’s work. Microsoft bought it in 2018 for $7.5 billion, and it’s only gotten bigger since.

This article breaks down how GitHub works, what makes it different from Git itself, its key features (including GitHub Actions and Copilot), pricing, alternatives like GitLab and Bitbucket, and how to set up your first repository.

What is GitHub

GitHub is a cloud-based platform for hosting Git repositories that lets developers store, manage, and collaborate on code. It sits on top of Git, the distributed version control system Linus Torvalds created in 2005, and adds a web interface, collaboration tools, and project management features that Git alone doesn’t offer.

Microsoft acquired GitHub in 2018 for $7.5 billion. At the time, the platform had roughly 28 million users. That number has grown to over 150 million developers as of early 2025, according to GitHub’s Octoverse report.

The platform now hosts more than 420 million repositories and over 1 billion total repos when you count forks and private projects. Over 90% of Fortune 100 companies use GitHub in their development workflows.

GitHub isn’t just a place to dump code. It’s where teams run their entire software development process, from tracking bugs and reviewing pull requests to automating builds and deploying applications. Microsoft’s VS Code repository alone has over 19,800 contributors, which gives you a sense of the scale we’re talking about.

Developers made over 5 billion contributions across public and private projects in 2024. That includes commits, pull requests, issues, and code reviews. Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on the platform that same year, largely driven by growth in AI and machine learning projects.

How GitHub Works

GitHub runs on version control. Every change to a file gets tracked, timestamped, and attributed to a specific person. You can roll back to any previous state of your project at any time. That’s the foundation.

But the real value is what GitHub layers on top of Git’s command-line tooling. The web interface makes it possible to browse code, review changes, open discussions, and manage projects without ever touching a terminal (though most developers still do both).

Repositories and File Storage

Repositories are the basic unit. Each repo contains all files for a project plus the full revision history of every file. You choose whether a repo is public (anyone can see it) or private (only invited collaborators).

A typical repo includes a README file, a license, a .gitignore file for excluding certain files from tracking, and your actual codebase.

• Cloning copies a remote repository to your local machine
• Forking creates your own copy of someone else’s repo on GitHub, which is how most open source contributions start
• Commit history provides a complete log of every change, who made it, and when

GitHub reported that developers created 28 million new repositories in 2023 alone, averaging about 76,000 new repos per day. By mid-2024, total repos exceeded 1 billion.

Branches and Pull Requests

Branching is where collaborative development actually happens.

A branch is a parallel version of your code. You create one, make changes in isolation, and then propose merging those changes back into the main branch. This keeps the primary codebase stable while multiple people work on different features at the same time.

Pull requests are the mechanism for proposing and reviewing those changes. When you open a pull request, other team members can:

• Review the code line by line
• Leave inline comments and suggestions
• Approve or request changes before merging

GitHub’s Octoverse data shows 150 million pull requests were merged in 2023, up 14% year over year. The code review process built into pull requests is what makes GitHub more than just file storage. It’s where the actual collaboration plays out.

GitHub vs. Git

This trips up a lot of people, so here it is plainly.

Git is a distributed version control system that runs on your local machine. It tracks changes, handles branching and merging, and doesn’t need an internet connection to work. Linus Torvalds built it in 2005 to manage Linux kernel development.

GitHub is a hosted platform built on top of Git. It adds a web interface, collaboration features, and cloud storage that Git doesn’t provide on its own.

You can use Git without GitHub. Plenty of teams do, often with alternatives like GitLab or Bitbucket. But you can’t use GitHub without Git running underneath it.

The key difference: Git handles versioning. GitHub handles everything around it, including issue tracking, project boards, CI/CD automation through GitHub Actions, and static site hosting through GitHub Pages.

Your choice of source control management platform matters, but understanding the underlying Git commands is still the baseline. GitHub makes Git more accessible, not less important.

Key Features of GitHub

GitHub started as a code hosting service. Now it covers issue tracking, automation, static site hosting, cloud dev environments, and AI-assisted coding. The feature set has expanded significantly since Microsoft took over.

GitHub Actions runs over 5 million workflows daily, up 40% year over year according to recent platform data. The Marketplace offers more than 1,500 tools for automation. And Copilot has crossed 20 million users.

GitHub Actions and Automation

GitHub Actions is the platform’s built-in CI/CD system. You define workflows in YAML files inside your repository, and GitHub runs them automatically based on triggers you set.

Common triggers:

• A push to a specific branch
• A pull request being opened or updated
• A scheduled cron job
• A manual dispatch from the Actions tab

The Marketplace hosts over 7,800 pre-built actions across 32 categories. Teams use these for continuous integration, automated testing, continuous deployment, linting, and security scanning.

The Marketplace itself is expanding at roughly 41% annually, especially for CI-related tools. If you’re building a build pipeline, Actions is where most GitHub-native teams start.

GitHub Copilot

Copilot is GitHub’s AI coding assistant, built with OpenAI models. It suggests code in real time as you type, generates entire functions from comments, and now includes chat-based interaction directly inside your editor.

The numbers behind Copilot have gotten pretty staggering.

Copilot generates an average of 46% of code written by users, reaching as high as 61% in Java projects. Developers complete tasks 55% faster in controlled studies, and 88% of generated code stays in the final version, according to GitHub’s own research.

Copilot tiers:

At GitHub Universe 2025, the company announced multi-model support including GPT-4o, Claude 3.5, and Gemini 1.5 Pro. An autonomous coding agent was also introduced that can fix bugs and add features without manual prompting.

Gartner forecasts that 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI coding assistants by 2028, up from less than 14% in early 2024. Copilot currently holds about 42% of the AI coding tools market.

Look, Copilot isn’t perfect. A 2024 GitClear analysis found AI-generated code has a 41% higher churn rate than human-written code. But the productivity gains are real enough that most teams are adopting it anyway. The broader AI code generation tools market hit $7.37 billion in 2025.

Who Uses GitHub

The short answer: almost everyone building software. The longer answer gets more interesting.

Individual developers use GitHub to host personal projects, build portfolios, and contribute to open source. For a lot of junior developers, your GitHub profile is basically your resume. Hiring managers look at commit history, contribution graphs, and project READMEs before they ever see a cover letter.

Enterprise and Fortune 100: Over 90% of Fortune 100 companies use GitHub, with enterprise adoption climbing to 92% according to recent data. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta all host projects on the platform, even though Microsoft (a direct competitor) owns it.

GitHub Education had over 7 million verified participants in 2024, with 100% year-over-year growth among students and teachers adopting Copilot through the free access program.

Non-developers are a growing segment. Writers use GitHub for collaborative document editing. Researchers version-control datasets and papers. Government agencies publish policy documents and open data on public repos. The platform’s usefulness extends well beyond software development in the traditional sense.

Geographically, the user base is shifting. India now has over 17 million developers on GitHub, growing at 32% year over year. If that trend holds, India is projected to surpass the United States as the largest developer community on the platform by 2028. Africa and Latin America are also seeing significant growth, with Nigeria alone at 1.4 million developers.

GitHub for Open Source Projects

Open source on GitHub hit a milestone in 2024. According to the Octoverse report, 1 billion contributions were made to public and open source projects that year. That’s roughly 2.7 million contributions per day.

There was also a 98% increase in the total number of open source projects on GitHub in 2024. And 1.4 million new developers made their first open source contribution.

How Open Source Works on GitHub

The typical flow for contributing to an open source project:

• Fork the repository to your own account
• Create a branch for your changes
• Make your edits and commit them
• Open a pull request back to the original project
• Maintainers review, discuss, and merge (or reject) your contribution

Projects use GitHub Issues for bug reports and feature requests. Discussions provide a forum-style space for broader conversations. Wikis handle technical documentation.

Biggest Open Source Projects on GitHub

The most active open source repos by contributor count in 2024 tell you a lot about where the industry is headed.

Most of the top projects are commercially backed. But community-driven projects like Home Assistant show that independent open source is thriving too.

Funding and Sustainability

GitHub Sponsors lets users and organizations send monthly payments directly to open source maintainers. Corporate sponsorships grew 80% recently, with total contributions crossing $50 million.

A 2024 survey by GitHub, the Linux Foundation, and Harvard University found that 86% of organizational contribution value to open source is employee labor. Companies pay their developers to contribute to projects they depend on. That’s the actual economic engine behind most open source work, not donations.

If your team builds web apps or mobile applications, you’re almost certainly relying on open source packages hosted on GitHub. Understanding how that ecosystem works (and how it’s funded) matters more than most teams realize.

GitHub Pricing and Plans

GitHub uses a freemium model. The free tier is genuinely generous, and most solo developers never need to upgrade. Teams are a different story.

Here’s what each plan actually includes as of 2025:

All plans include unlimited public and private repositories. That wasn’t always the case. Private repos used to be a paid feature, which was one of the reasons Bitbucket gained early traction.

Free tier highlights: unlimited repos, Dependabot security alerts, GitHub Pages for static site hosting, community support, and 2,000 GitHub Actions minutes per month for private repos. Public repos get unlimited Actions minutes.

The Team plan adds required reviewers on pull requests, code owners, draft pull requests, and branch protection rules. Those $4 per user per month buy you the collaboration controls most professional teams need.

Enterprise targets regulated industries. SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, and the option to purchase GitHub Advanced Security (code scanning, secret scanning, dependency review) at $49 per active committer per month.

Hidden Costs to Watch

GitHub Copilot is billed separately. Even if you’re on Enterprise, Copilot Business adds $19/user/month on top. A 50-person team on Enterprise plus Copilot Business pays $2,000 monthly before any overages.

Actions minutes burn faster than you’d expect. Linux jobs consume minutes 1:1, but Windows jobs count as 2x and macOS jobs count as 10x actual runtime. A 10-minute macOS build uses 100 minutes from your allocation.

GitHub Packages storage overages, Codespaces compute time, and Large File Storage all add line items. Check the billing dashboard monthly. Set spending limits before your team discovers them the hard way.

GitHub Education

Students and teachers get a different deal entirely. The GitHub Student Developer Pack includes free Copilot Pro access (normally $10/month), unlimited Actions minutes, and tools from partner companies.

GitHub Education had over 7 million verified participants in 2024 according to the Octoverse report, with 100% year-over-year growth among students adopting Copilot through the free access program.

GitHub Alternatives

GitHub dominates, but it’s not the only option. The StackOverflow 2022 Developer Survey showed 87% of developers use GitHub for personal projects. That leaves room for competitors that serve specific niches well.

GitLab

The full DevOps platform in one app. GitLab bundles source control, CI/CD, security scanning, monitoring, and incident management into a single product. GitHub requires Marketplace integrations or third-party tools for half of that.

GitLab can also be self-hosted since it’s open source. Companies that need full control over their code hosting infrastructure often pick GitLab for that reason alone. The paid tiers run $29/user/month (Premium) and $99/user/month (Ultimate), which competes with Veracode and Checkmarx on security features.

Bitbucket

Bitbucket exists because of Atlassian. If your team runs on Jira, Confluence, and Trello, Bitbucket slots in with native integrations that GitHub and GitLab can’t match. You see branches, commits, and pull requests directly inside Jira issues without any extra setup.

UpGuard reports Bitbucket has over 10 million registered users, with 60 of the Fortune 100 using it daily. Free for teams up to 5 users, then $3/user/month for Standard.

Azure DevOps

Microsoft owns both GitHub and Azure DevOps, which makes choosing between them confusing. Azure DevOps targets enterprise teams already committed to the Azure cloud stack. It includes Azure Repos (Git hosting), Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, and Azure Artifacts.

For teams deep in DevOps workflows within the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure DevOps sometimes fits better than GitHub. But GitHub is where Microsoft is putting its investment. Copilot, Actions, Codespaces. The writing is on the wall.

SourceForge

Still around. Still hosts legacy projects that haven’t migrated. SourceForge was the GitHub of the 2000s, before Git even existed. Some older open source projects remain there, but new development has almost entirely moved to GitHub or GitLab.

Picking a platform depends on your team’s existing tools, compliance requirements, and whether the open source community matters for your project. For most front-end development and back-end development workflows, GitHub’s ecosystem is hard to beat.

How to Get Started with GitHub

Setting up takes about five minutes. Getting comfortable with the workflow takes a bit longer, but the basics are straightforward.

Create Your Account

Go to github.com and sign up. Your username is public and permanent (well, you can change it, but it breaks existing links). Pick something professional if you plan to use your profile for job hunting.

Add a profile photo, a short bio, and your location. These details matter more than people think. Recruiters and hiring managers browse GitHub profiles constantly.

Create Your First Repository

Two ways to do this:

• Web interface: Click the “+” button in the top toolbar, select “New repository,” name it, check “Add a README file,” and hit create
• Command line: Run git init locally, add your files, commit, then push to GitHub as a remote

Start with the web interface if you’re new. The CLI can wait. Get familiar with how repos look, how files are organized, and how the commit history displays before adding terminal commands to the mix.

If you’re setting up a VS Code environment alongside GitHub, you can connect VS Code to GitHub directly for a smoother editing workflow.

Set Up a Profile README

This is a trick that not enough developers use. Create a repo with the exact same name as your GitHub username and add a README.md file. That README renders directly on your profile page.

What to include:

• A short intro about yourself and what you’re working on
• Your tech stack (languages, frameworks, tools)
• Links to your best projects

Think of it as a landing page for your developer identity. Hiring managers see this before they see pinned repos.

Explore and Contribute

Browse the Explore tab to find trending repositories and topics that interest you. GitHub’s Octoverse report shows 1.4 million new developers made their first open source contribution in 2024. A lot of them started by fixing typos in documentation or answering issues. You don’t need to rewrite someone’s authentication module on day one.

If you’re just learning how to use Git, start by cloning a public repository, reading the code, and making small changes locally. The learning curve for Git workflows is real, but it flattens out fast once you’ve done a few commits and pull requests.

GitHub is where most of the software development world lives. Getting comfortable with it isn’t optional if you’re building software professionally. Start with a repo, make some commits, open a pull request, and go from there.

FAQ on What Is GitHub

Is GitHub free to use?

Yes. GitHub’s free tier includes unlimited public and private repositories, 2,000 GitHub Actions minutes per month, and Dependabot security alerts. Most individual developers and small open source projects never need a paid plan.

What is the difference between Git and GitHub?

Git is a distributed version control system that runs locally on your machine. GitHub is a cloud-based platform built on top of Git that adds collaboration tools, a web interface, pull requests, and project management features.

What is GitHub used for?

GitHub is used for hosting code repositories, collaborating on software projects, running automated builds with GitHub Actions, tracking bugs through issues, and hosting static websites with GitHub Pages.

Is GitHub only for developers?

No. Writers, researchers, designers, and government agencies use GitHub for version-controlled documentation, dataset management, and collaborative editing. Anyone who needs to track changes to files can use it.

Is GitHub safe for storing code?

GitHub uses encryption in transit and at rest, offers two-factor authentication, and provides secret scanning and Dependabot alerts for vulnerabilities. Over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust it with their codebases.

Does Microsoft own GitHub?

Yes. Microsoft acquired GitHub in October 2018 for $7.5 billion. The platform continues to operate independently with its own leadership, and it remains open to all developers regardless of their tech stack.

What programming languages does GitHub support?

GitHub supports every programming language. Developers use nearly 500 languages on the platform, with Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, and C# being the most popular as of 2024.

What is a GitHub repository?

A repository is a storage space for a project’s files and their complete revision history. Repositories can be public (visible to everyone) or private (restricted to invited collaborators).

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programming tool built with OpenAI models. It suggests code in real time inside your editor, generates functions from comments, and currently writes about 46% of users’ code on average.

How do I contribute to open source on GitHub?

Fork a public repository, create a branch, make your changes, and open a pull request. Many projects label beginner-friendly issues as “good first issue” to help new contributors find a starting point.

Conclusion

Understanding what is GitHub comes down to this: it’s the platform where modern software gets built, reviewed, and shipped. From solo side projects to enterprise codebases managed by Fortune 100 companies, GitHub sits at the center of how developers collaborate.

The combination of repository hosting, pull request workflows, GitHub Actions for CI/CD automation, and Copilot for AI-assisted coding makes it more than a source control tool. It’s a complete development environment.

Whether you’re exploring agile development practices, contributing to open source projects, or managing your team’s software release cycle, GitHub has the tooling to support it.

Create an account. Make your first commit. The barrier to entry has never been lower, and the developer community waiting on the other side has never been larger.

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Bogdan Sandu

Bogdan Sandu specializes in web design, focusing on creating user-friendly websites, and innovative UI kits.

Many of his resources are available on various design marketplaces and for free on Codepen.

Over the years, he's worked with a range of clients and contributed to design publications like Design Your Way, Designmodo, WebDesignerDepot, WPDean, and Speckyboy, and Slider Revolution among others.

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