Inviting collaborators to a personal repository

You can invite users to become collaborators to your personal repository.

Who can use this feature?

If you're using GitHub Free, you can add unlimited collaborators on public and private repositories.

In this article

About collaboration in a personal repository

To collaborate with users in a repository that belongs to your personal account on GitHub, you can invite the users as collaborators.

If you want to grant more granular access to the repository, you can create a repository within an organization. For more information, see "Access permissions on GitHub."

Private forks inherit the permissions structure of the upstream repository. This helps owners of private repositories maintain control over their code. For example, if the upstream repository is private and gives read/write access to a team, then the same team will have read/write access to any forks of the private upstream repository. Only team permissions (not individual permissions) are inherited by private forks.

Note: When you change base permissions for an organization, permissions for private forks are not automatically updated. For more information, see "Setting base permissions for an organization."

Inviting a collaborator to a personal repository

You can send an invitation to collaborate in your repository directly to someone on GitHub, or to the person's email address.

GitHub limits the number of people who can be invited to a repository within a 24-hour period. If you exceed this limit, either wait 24 hours or create an organization to collaborate with more people. For more information, see "Creating a new organization from scratch."

  1. Ask for the username of the person you're inviting as a collaborator. If they don't have a username yet, they can sign up for GitHub. For more information, see "Creating an account on GitHub."

  2. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.

  3. Under your repository name, click Settings. If you cannot see the "Settings" tab, select the dropdown menu, then click Settings.

    Screenshot of a repository header showing the tabs. The "Settings" tab is highlighted by a dark orange outline.

  4. In the "Access" section of the sidebar, click Collaborators.

  5. Click Add people.

  6. In the search field, start typing the name of person you want to invite, then click a name in the list of matches.

  7. Click Add NAME to REPOSITORY.

  8. The user will receive an email inviting them to the repository. Once they accept your invitation, they will have collaborator access to your repository.

Further reading