GitHub Pages limits and terms
GitHub Pages is free, and it has limits. Static publishing knows them: the wizard states them, the preview shows the size of the build against them, and every push of a GitHub Pages target is checked first.
What you'll have at the end
A build that fits GitHub Pages, and a site that keeps to its terms.
The limits
| Limit | What static publishing does | |
|---|---|---|
| The site | 1 GB | above 90 %: a warning; above it: not pushed |
| One file | 100 MB | above 50 MB: a warning (GitHub warns too); above 100 MB: not pushed |
| Traffic | about 100 GB a month (a soft limit) | nothing to check; GitHub writes to you when a site uses far more |
| Builds | about 10 an hour (a soft limit, branch builds) | one publish is one build |
| Repository | public on GitHub Free; private on GitHub Pro, Team or Enterprise | a private repository is a warning |
The limits checked are MaxSiteBytes and MaxFileBytes in [StaticPublishSettings] (1 GB and 100 MB). A push over
them stays pending with the reason in the job's report and in History; nothing reaches GitHub. These are
GitHub's published figures; GitHub may change them, and its own documentation is the reference.
Make a build smaller
- Files in step 7 of the wizard: Only what the pages name (
Assets=referenced) instead of every image of published content. - Leave out pages or sections that need not be public (
ExcludePaths[],ExcludeSections[]). - Large videos and downloads: link them from another host (a video platform, a release download) instead of the site's storage.
- The preview lists the largest files and the size against the limit before you publish.
The terms
GitHub Pages is for project, personal and organization sites. Its terms say it is not meant to run an online business, an e-commerce site or anything mainly for commercial transactions, and not as free file hosting. A shop, a members' area or a site that sells should stay on your own hosting; static publishing also leaves out what cannot work statically (search, forms, logins). Read GitHub's current terms for GitHub Pages and its acceptable use policies before you publish: they apply to your site, not to Exponential.
A site whose content must not be public belongs in a private repository on a paid plan, or on another host: a free plan serves only public repositories, and their files are public on GitHub too. See Keep private content private.