Adding Collaborators

[pdavid-OW]

Select Topic Area

Question

GitHub Feature Area

Other

Body

I want to add collaborators to the Repository but it is asking me to buy at least one more seat to add this user as a collaborator. However, I have removed some existing collaborators and tried, but the same error pops up. I'm using the basic free plan.

[queenofcorgis]

Hey there! 👋

Welcome to the GitHub Community, @pdavid-OW ! We're happy you're here. You are more likely to get a useful response if you are posting in the applicable category. The Accessibility category is a place for our community to discuss and provide feedback on the digital accessibility of GitHub products. Digital accessibility means that GitHub tools, and technologies, are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them.

I've gone ahead and moved this to the correct category for you, Repositories. Good luck!

[Ariel-Canseco]

Suggested Answer

On the GitHub Free plan for organizations, adding outside collaborators may require available seats depending on how your organization is configured.

Here are the key points to understand:

🔎 1️⃣ Organization members vs. Outside collaborators

Organization members consume a seat.

Outside collaborators on private repositories may also consume a seat under certain billing configurations.

On the Free plan, private repositories are limited in terms of seat allocation.

Even if you remove collaborators from a repository, the seat may still be consumed if:

The user is still a member of the organization.

The seat hasn’t fully synced in the billing system yet.

🔁 2️⃣ Seat synchronization delay

Billing updates are not always instant.
After removing members or collaborators, it can take some time for the seat to become available.

Try:

Removing the user from the organization (not just the repository).

Checking Organization → Settings → Billing → Seats.

Waiting a few minutes and refreshing.

⚠ 3️⃣ Important Free Plan Limitation

If you're using GitHub Free for Organizations, you may have limited private collaboration capacity. In some cases, GitHub requires at least one paid seat (Team plan or above) to add certain types of collaborators.

If that’s the case, your options are:

Upgrade to GitHub Team.

Make the repository public (if appropriate).

Use a personal account repository instead of an organization.

📌 Summary

Removing collaborators from a repository does not automatically free a billing seat if they remain organization members.
Verify seat usage under Organization Billing settings and allow time for synchronization.

If no seats are available under the Free plan, upgrading may be required.

[queenofcorgis]

@Ariel-Canseco
We’ve clarified our stance on using generative AI tools like ChatGPT within our Community via this announcement. Please review the guidelines to ensure your post meets them as failure to adhere to those rules can result in action taken by our moderator team.  You can read our updated Code of Conduct and the announcement for more details. Thank you for helping us maintain an authentic and beneficial space for everyone.

[PSMatheus01]

This is most likely a confusion between account types, because on the Free plan, outside collaborators on private repos don't consume paid seats.

Let me break it down so you can pinpoint what's happening:

If you're on a personal account (not an organization): GitHub Free for personal accounts has a hard limit of 3 collaborators on private repositories. Removing one should free up the slot immediately, but sometimes the UI takes a few minutes to catch up. If you need more than 3, you'd have to upgrade to GitHub Pro ($4/month) — there's no way around it on a personal account.

If you're on an organization account: This is where it gets interesting. GitHub Free for organizations actually allows unlimited collaborators on private repos, and outside collaborators specifically do not use a paid seat. The official docs literally say:

"Unless you are on a free plan, adding an outside collaborator to a private repository will use one of your paid licenses."

So if you're genuinely on the Free org plan and still seeing the seat error, a few things to check:

• Expired trial leftover: If your org was ever on a Team or Enterprise trial that expired, the billing system can get stuck enforcing seat limits from the old plan. Check https://github.com/organizations/YOUR_ORG/settings/billing/plans and make sure it actually says "GitHub Free" with no residual subscription hanging around.

• Member vs. Outside Collaborator: There's a difference. If you're adding the person through the org's People page as a member, try adding them directly to the repo instead — go to Repository → Settings → Collaborators and teams → Add people. That adds them as an outside collaborator, which shouldn't trigger the seat requirement on Free.

• If nothing works: At that point it's likely a billing system bug on GitHub's side. I'd open a ticket at support.github.com and reference the exact error message — they can inspect the entitlement state and fix it.

Here's a quick reference:

Scenario	Seat required?
Personal Free, private repo, already 3 collaborators	Yes — need Pro
Org Free, adding outside collaborator to private repo	No
Org on expired Team/Enterprise trial	Possibly bugged — contact support

Hope this helps narrow it down. Let me know which scenario matches yours and I can help further.

[queenofcorgis]

@PSMatheus01

We’ve clarified our stance on using generative AI tools like ChatGPT within our Community via this announcement. Please review the guidelines to ensure your post meets them as failure to adhere to those rules can result in action taken by our moderator team.  You can read our updated Code of Conduct and the announcement for more details. Thank you for helping us maintain an authentic and beneficial space for everyone.

[PSMatheus01]

@queenofcorgis Hey, I appreciate the moderation work, but I'm genuinely curious — what specifically about my response triggered the AI flag?

I wrote that based on my own experience dealing with GitHub billing quirks and the official docs. The distinction between personal accounts (3 collaborator limit) and org accounts (unlimited outside collaborators on Free) is straight from the GitHub documentation, which I went and checked before responding.

I get that you're dealing with a flood of low-effort AI-generated answers (like the one above mine with the emojis and numbered lists), but I'd appreciate not being lumped in with those. My answer actually addresses the author's specific situation with actionable steps, not generic copy-paste advice.

If there's a specific formatting or style guideline I should follow to avoid this in the future, I'm happy to adjust. But the content itself is mine and I stand by it — I'm just trying to help the person with their issue.

[queenofcorgis]

@PSMatheus01 hey thank you for opening this dialogue and sharing more context on your response, this helps us all moderate better. The biggest flags for me was when reviewing this were some of the language "let me break it down" and I use a tool that it said it was 100% AI-generated (which isn't a perfect system) which led me to believe this fell into the copy and paste camp.

The best way to avoid getting lumped in is simply disclosing that you used AI in your response and any specifics of what it did (cleaned up formatting, helped you put it into English, etc).

Thank you for checking our documentation, being curious, and sharing your own experience.

[PSMatheus01]

@queenofcorgis That's fair, and thanks for explaining. I can see how those AI detection tools can flag structured writing — I tend to organize my thoughts pretty methodically, which I guess is a double-edged sword haha.

I'll keep that in mind for future responses. English isn't my first language so I do tend to overthink how I phrase things, which probably makes it come across more "polished" than a typical quick reply.

Anyway, hope the answer is still useful to @pdavid-OW — that's what matters here. Thanks for keeping the community clean, I know it's not an easy job.

[queenofcorgis]

@PSMatheus01 thank you for having this conversation with grace and curiosity, I enjoyed hearing your perspective and I'm going to share this out with our wider team. I'm excited to see what other knowledge you generously share with the community ❤️

[Arthur199S]

If you're on the GitHub Free plan and it's asking you to buy an additional seat, you're likely adding the user to an organization repository, not a personal repository.

On the Free plan:

Personal repositories → You can add unlimited collaborators for free.

Organization repositories → You are limited by the number of available seats in the organization.

Even if you removed collaborators, check the following:

Go to Organization Settings → Billing → Seats and confirm how many seats are currently in use.

Make sure the removed users are no longer members of the organization (not just removed from the repository).

If a seat was just freed, try logging out and back in — sometimes it takes a few minutes to update.

If you don't want to pay for additional seats, you can:

Transfer the repository to your personal account and add collaborators from there, or

Upgrade the organization plan.

That’s why the error is happening.