GitHub

What is GitHub?

GitHub is the largest code hosting platform in the world. It's built on Git and provides a web interface for managing repositories, reviewing code, tracking issues, and running automated workflows. For most developers, it's where their code lives — personal projects, open-source contributions, and professional work alike.

Pull requests and code review

Pull requests are the core workflow on GitHub. You push a branch, open a PR, and collaborators can review the diff, leave inline comments, request changes, and approve before merging. It's a straightforward process that scales from solo projects to large engineering teams. Branch protection rules let you enforce review requirements and status checks before code can be merged.

GitHub Actions

Actions is GitHub's CI/CD platform. You define workflows in YAML and they run on pushes, pull requests, or any other event in your repository. You can build, test, lint, deploy, and do almost anything else in the pipeline. The marketplace has thousands of pre-built actions, and the free tier is generous enough to cover most open-source and small team workloads.

GitHub Copilot

Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant, available as an extension for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, and others. It provides inline code suggestions and can handle larger tasks through its chat interface. Copilot is sold as a separate subscription but integrates tightly with the rest of the GitHub experience.

Pricing

GitHub is free for public repositories and offers a free tier for private repos with limited Actions minutes. Paid plans add more storage, minutes, and team management features. Most individual developers can get by on the free plan.