How do I cut GitHub Enterprise seat costs?
GitHub bills per active committer on Enterprise Cloud — reclaim seats from anyone who has not pushed a commit in 90 days, and remove outside collaborators who no longer need repo access.
Details
GitHub Enterprise is $21/user/mo. A 100-developer org that keeps 20 dormant seats (former employees, contractors, on-leave staff) is burning $5,000/year.
The 'active committer' definition is generous — even a single push or PR review in the billing period counts. But if someone has not touched the org in 90 days, they almost certainly do not need access.
Outside collaborators (contractors added to specific repos) are billed the same as internal members. Contractor churn is the biggest source of GitHub ghost seats.
Automate this with SeatMap.AI
The audit path above works. It also takes hours per month per tool. SeatMap.AI runs it on a schedule, stages the reclaim actions for review, and shows you the annualized savings in real dollars.