GitHub
GitHub is a code hosting platform: Git repositories with pull requests and issues, Actions to test and deploy each change, and Copilot, its AI coding assistant, in your editor and on github.com.
It suits founders with code to keep, whether they write it or an AI tool does, and tools such as Lovable, Cursor and Sentry connect to it.
The free plan covers unlimited private repositories and 2,000 Actions minutes a month; Team is $4 a user a month, and Copilot is priced separately from $10 a month, as checked on 30 October 2026.
Reviewed by the IndieHacked team
- What it does
- Where your code lives: Git repositories, pull requests and Actions to test and deploy, with Copilot writing and reviewing code beside you.
- Our take
- Founders with code to keep, written by hand or by an AI tool. Keep the repository, the reviews and the deploys in one place, and assign Copilot an issue to come back with a pull request.
- Pricing
- FreemiumLow priceFree: unlimited public and private repositories, $12 of Actions compute a month (2,000 minutes on a standard Linux runner) and 500 MB of package storage; Actions on public repositories with standard runners cost nothing. Team is $4 a user a month, with $18 of compute (3,000 minutes), 2 GB of packages, and required reviewers, protected branches and code owners on private repositories. Copilot is a plan of its own: Free has 2,000 code completions a month and limited chat; Pro is $10 a month with 1,500 AI credits, Pro+ $39 with 7,000 and Max $100 with 20,000. A credit is $0.01 of model use, so a long agent session with a large model costs more than a quick question, while completions stay unlimited on paid plans. Past the allowance you set a dollar budget for more, upgrade, or wait for the reset on the 1st of the month, as checked on 30 October 2026.
The IndieHacked breakdown
What it does
GitHub hosts your Git repositories, public or private, with pull requests for reviewing each change, issues and Projects for planning, and Pages for a static site. Actions runs workflows on each push or pull request to test, build and deploy; standard runners are free on public repositories, and private ones draw on a monthly allowance. Codespaces is a development environment in the cloud, with 120 core hours a month free on a personal account.
Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant, sold as a separate plan. It suggests code as you type in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse and Xcode, answers questions in chat, reviews pull requests, and takes an issue you assign it and comes back with a pull request. Paid plans can also hand tasks to third-party coding agents, Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex among them, in preview.
Who it suits
Founders with code to keep, whether they write it or an AI tool does. The free plan holds unlimited private repositories, so a side project costs nothing until it needs required reviewers or protected branches on private code, which come with Team at $4 a user a month.
It is also where other tools plug in. Lovable, reviewed here, syncs each project's code to a GitHub repository, Cursor's cloud agents clone from it and push back to a branch, and Sentry's Seer opens its fixes as pull requests on it. Copilot then writes and reviews in the place the code already lives.
Not the right fit for
Founders who don't plan to read code. GitHub and Copilot work in pull requests and diffs that someone reviews and merges. Lovable, reviewed here, builds a web app from a description and keeps the code in a GitHub repository for a developer to pick up later.
Companies that must keep their code on their own servers. GitHub's self-hosted version, Enterprise Server, comes only with the Enterprise plan; Free and Team run on github.com. GitLab Self-Hosted and Bitbucket Data Center are self-hosted alternatives.
Also on the shortlist
- CursorDeveloper toolsIts own editor and cloud agents, with Cursor's Grok and Composer models in a weekly pool from $8 a month and third-party models billed at API list price.Free with limited use, paid plans from $8 a month, as checked on 30 October 2026
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