GitHub Codespaces
- Free allowance
- Quoted: 'All GitHub personal accounts include a quota of free compute time and storage for GitHub Codespaces.' The table row is '| GitHub Free for personal accounts | 15 GB-month | 120 hrs |'.
- Verdict
- ★ qualifiesusable as stated; the read path was probed
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- volume-quota120 core-hours of compute a month on GitHub Free, which is 60 wall-clock hours on the 2-core default machine and 30 hours on a 4-core; 15 GB-month of storage a month on GitHub Free; beyond it, USD 0.07 per GB-month
- Evidence
- documented24 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-25checked 2026-10-25 (live); stale on 2026-11-25
| Free tier | Quoted: 'All GitHub personal accounts include a quota of free compute time and storage for GitHub Codespaces.' The table row is '| GitHub Free for personal accounts | 15 GB-month | 120 hrs |'. The 120 is a core-hour: the compute column is multiplied by the machine's core count, so 120 core-hours is 60 wall-clock hours on the 2-core default. Quoted: 'The compute cost is proportional to the number of processor cores in the machine type you choose for your codespace, as shown in the following table. For example, the compute cost of using a codespace for an hour on a 16-core machine is eight times greater than a 2-core machine.' unit hours; metered on wall-clock; The vendor's own header for the column is 'Compute time per month' and the value is 120 hrs, but the included-usage multiplier makes it core-hours. 120 core-hours / 2 cores = 60 hours of the default machine. |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
120 core-hours is the number that binds. At the 2-core default it is 60 hours a month, which is 2 hours a day; at 4 cores it is 30 hours a month, which is 1 hour a day. The 12-hour maximum lifetime per session and the 30-minute default idle stop are what keep the quota from being burned in one sitting. |
| Binding | volume-quota 120 core-hours is 60 hours on the smallest machine, so at 24/7 the month is gone in two and a half days. The quota is what fails, not identity and not the clock. |
| Identity | email a GitHub account and nothing else: no card, no phone and no identity document to create a codespace. No hold exists because no card is taken. The gate is at the quota, not at signup: 'If your account does not have a valid payment method on file, usage is blocked once you use up your quota.' Debit acceptance is not stated on any page read. |
| Egress | no egress allowance or per-byte price published on any page read; the billing page prices compute per core-hour and storage per GB-month and says nothing about transfer |
| Per-object cap | not applicable: the unit is a session, not an object |
| Retention | Quoted: 'Inactive codespaces are automatically deleted. You can choose how long your stopped codespaces are retained, up to a maximum of 30 days.' and 'By default, GitHub Codespaces are automatically deleted after they have been stopped and have remained inactive for 30 days.' and 'Automatic deletion happens irrespective of whether a codespace contains unpushed changes.' The disk persists across a stop and start until that clock runs out. (30 days) |
| Interface | rest, cli gh codespace ssh and the VS Code or browser client; a devcontainer defines the image |
| Tooling | gh CLI, the Codespaces API, devcontainer.json, prebuilds |
| Composes with | the cheapest path to a real Linux dev machine with a shell that a GitHub identity already opens |
| Reliability | a codespace stops on an account-level idle timeout (30 minutes by default, settable between 5 and 240 minutes) and is deleted 30 days after it is stopped, irrespective of unpushed changes |
| Notes | The core-hour unit is the trap: 120 reads like hours and is not, because it is spent per core, so the wall-clock allowance halves at 4 cores and quarters at 8. The shape is quoted from the overview page as the bottom of the machine-type range: 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, 32 GB storage, and the vendor writes decimal GB, kept unconverted. Identity is email, not card: the gate is at the quota, so a reader who plans one month never meets a card and a reader who plans a second month does. Two things this record does not establish. First, the egress term: no page read publishes a quota, a shaping tier or a price for transfer, so the field is a dash and not 'unlimited'. |
| Evidence note | documented the quota, the storage allowance, the per-core multiplier and the payment-method block are quoted from GitHub's billing page read; the idle timeout, the 12-hour lifetime and the 30-day retention are quoted from GitHub's own how-to pages read; the 2-core shape is quoted from the Codespaces overview. The egress term is not published anywhere read and is recorded as absent. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 24
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | GitHub Free for personal accounts: 15 GB-month storage and 120 hours compute a month |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | if the account has no valid payment method, usage is blocked once the quota is used |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | the compute cost is proportional to the core count, so a 16-core machine costs eight times a 2-core one |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/setting-your-user-preferences/ | quoted: deleted after 30 days stopped and inactive; maximum retention is 30 days; 'Automatic deletion happens irrespective of whether a codespace contains unpushed changes' |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/troubleshooting/troubleshootin | quoted: compute counted in core hours as active time multiplied by the machine's core multiplier; default idle timeout stops a codespace after 30 minutes |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/troubleshooting/troubleshootin | quoted: only the creator, an org owner, or the retention period can delete a codespace |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | the GitHub Free for personal accounts row is 15 GB-month of storage and 120 hrs of compute, and 'the compute cost ... is proportional to the number of processor cores', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/overview | machine types run 'from 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage, up to 32 cores, 128 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | the page's own worked example: 'the compute cost of using a codespace for an hour on a 16-core machine is eight times greater than a 2-core machine', quoted |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/overview | quoted: 'from 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage, up to 32 cores, 128 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage'; and 'You have limited access to the outer Linux virtual machine host.' |
| 2026-10-24 | github.com/features/codespaces | quoted: 'GitHub will provide users in the free plan 120 core hours or 60 hours of run time on a 2 core codespace, plus 15 GB of storage each month.' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | part of the text of Limits, above |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/setting-your-user-preferences/ | quoted: 'A codespace will stop running after a period of inactivity. By default this period is 30 minutes'; and 'a codespace has a maximum lifetime of 12 hours' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | quoted: '| GitHub Free for personal accounts | 15 GB-month | 120 hrs |' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | quoted: '| Codespaces compute | 2 core | 1 hour | 2 | $0.18 |' — the rate that makes 120 core-hours 60 hours of 2 cores |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | part of the text of Free tier, above |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | quoted: 'All GitHub personal accounts include a quota of free compute time and storage for GitHub Codespaces.' and the table row '| GitHub Free for personal accounts | 15 GB-month | 120 hrs |' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-c | quoted: 'The compute cost is proportional to the number of processor cores in the machine type you choose for your codespace ... For example, the compute cost of using a codespace for an hour on a 16-core machine is eight times greater than a 2-core machine.' Rate table: '| Codespaces compute | 2 core | 1 hour | 2 | $0.18 |' and '| Codespaces storage | Storage | 1 GB-month | Not applicable | $0.07 |' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/overview | quoted: 'Each codespace you create is hosted by GitHub in a Docker container, running on a virtual machine. You can choose from a selection of virtual machine types, from 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage, up to 32 cores, 128 GB RAM, and 128 GB storage.' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/setting-your-user-preferences/ | quoted: 'A codespace will stop running after a period of inactivity. By default this period is 30 minutes' and 'Regardless of your idle timeout setting, a codespace has a maximum lifetime of 12 hours.' The settable range is 'between 5 minutes and 240 minutes (4 hours)'. |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/setting-your-user-preferences/ | quoted: 'Inactive codespaces are automatically deleted. You can choose how long your stopped codespaces are retained, up to a maximum of 30 days.' and 'By default, GitHub Codespaces are automatically deleted after they have been stopped and have remained inactive for 30 days.' and 'Automatic deletion happens irrespective of whether a codespace contains unpushed changes.' |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/codespaces/developing-in-a-codespace/forw | quoted: 'Port forwarding gives you access to TCP ports running within your codespace.' and 'share forwarded ports publicly' — a forwarded port gets a URL, and public visibility makes it reachable, which a standard Actions runner cannot offer. |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-for | part of the text of Limits, above |
| 2026-10-24 | docs.github.com/en/get-started/start-your-journey/creating-a | quoted: 'To get started with GitHub.com, you need to have a personal account and a verified email address.' |
More fields 21
{
"shape": {
"vcpu": 2,
"ram_gib": 8,
"disk_gib": 32,
"gpu_class": null,
"gpu_count": null,
"note": "the 2-core default, quoted as 'from 2 cores, 8 GB RAM, and 32 GB storage'. The vendor writes decimal GB; the numbers are kept unconverted, so 8 GB is about 7.5 GiB and 32 GB about 29.8 GiB."
},
"billing_model": "free",
"granularity": {
"min_billed_s": 60,
"rounding_s": 60
},
"session_cap": {
"wall_clock_min": 720,
"idle_reap_s": 1800,
"restart_required": false,
"note": "12 hours maximum lifetime per session regardless of settings; stops after 30 minutes idle by default, settable between 5 and 240 minutes; deleted 30 days after being stopped. The disk survives a stop and start."
},
"keep_rate": {
"value": 0.0,
"basis": "compute stops when the codespace stops; storage keeps billing at USD 0.07 per GB-month past 15 GB-month",
"source": "https://docs.github.com/en/billing/concepts/product-billing/github-codespaces"
},
"persistent_storage": {
"included_gib": 15,
"price_gib_month": "USD 0.07 per GB-month beyond the quota",
"durability": "the codespace disk survives a stop and a start, and is destroyed when the codespace is deleted or 30 days after it was stopped",
"survives_stop": true,
"survives_destroy": false,
"max_retention": "30 days after the codespace is stopped, by default"
},
"network_out": {
"allow_outbound": true,
"allow_inbound_listen": true,
"ports": "forwarded ports get a URL; a port can be made public, so this is the one GitHub free machine that can serve a request",
"static_ip": false,
"ipv6": false,
"per_session_bytes": null
},
"free_tier_kind": "free-forever-with-quota",
"m10h_usd": 0.0,
"m24h_usd": 0.0,
"price_arithmetic": "120 core-hours / 2 cores = 60 wall-clock hours a month at USD 0.00 inside the quota. 10 h a day x 30 = 300 h needs 600 core-hours, five times the quota. 24/7 x 30 = 730 h needs 1,460 core-hours, twelve times the quota. Past the quota the rate is USD 0.18 per core-hour, so 600 core-hours would be USD 108.00 and 1,460 core-hours USD 262.80, both of which need a payment method on file.",
"price_basis": "10 h/day x 30 = 300 h; 24/7 x 30 = 730 h; core-hours, not wall-clock hours",
"burst_x": 1.0,
"facets": {},
"shape_note": "vendor states 32 GB (decimal) storage; kept as stated. RAM 8 GB is the vendor's own figure.",
"term": "none",
"unattended": true,
"unattended_mechanism": "a codespace keeps running while the browser is closed, subject to the account's idle-stop timeout; a background process survives until the codespace stops",
"units": "RAM and disk are the vendor's decimal GB, kept unconverted in ram_gib and disk_gib so 8 GB reads as 8 and 32 GB reads as 32. The true values are about 7.5 GiB and 29.8 GiB.",
"concurrency": {
"jobs_at_once": null,
"note": "not published on any page read: the number of codespaces one account may run at once is not stated. What is stated is that the quota is spent per core-hour, so running two 2-core codespaces spends it twice as fast."
},
"checked": {
"verified": [
"120 core-hours and 15 GB-month on GitHub Free",
"the 2-core / 8 GB / 32 GB bottom shape",
"30-minute default idle stop, settable 5 to 240 minutes",
"12-hour maximum lifetime per session",
"30-day deletion after a stop, irrespective of unpushed changes",
"no card at signup; a card only past the quota"
],
"new": null,
"open": "the egress term, and whether a forwarded public port survives an idle stop"
}
}