GitHub, the Microsoft-owned software hosting site, has decided to reduce prices on one of its most popular paid tiers. It has also decided to move the key feature of all the paid plans to the existing free tier. So, the subscription which previously cost USD 9 per user a month, will be only USD 4 per user a month. All the existing paid customers will have their bills automatically reduced going forward.

The announcement will brighten up the day for those who want to use GitHub for development and couldn’t pay the per-user price. Now, they will be able to sign up for the free version of GitHub and get access to that “key” feature. There will be unlimited private repositories for development available for organizations without paying any fees.

Until now, if a firm wanted to host its private development on GitHub, it had to subscribe to one of its premium plans starting at USD 7 a month. Only last year, the private repositories were made available for free (restricted to a specific number of collaborators).

What else at GitHub?

Adding to the private repository access, a team can also get 2,000 GitHub Actions’ minutes per month at no cost. Actions is an automation and CI/CD platform by GitHub that helps the application to organize the workflow.

Beyond the Free, Pro, and Team tiers, GitHub sells an enterprise and feature-rich–GitHub One—plan with special pricing. It is available and beneficial to large scale enterprises and organizations.

If the teams are still looking for more advanced features, such as code owners to own better control over a project, they need to pay USD 4 instead of USD 9 for the teams. And, the enterprise plan starts at USD 21 per month a user.

The recent announcement by GitHub said, “We’re happy to announce that we’re making private repositories with unlimited collaborators available to all GitHub accounts. All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone. Until now, if your organization wanted to use GitHub for private development, you had to subscribe to one of our paid plans. But every developer on earth should have access to GitHub. Price shouldn’t be a barrier.

Based on the latest update, GitHub has over 40 million developers on the platform and is aiming to reach over 1,000 million developers by 2025. The availability of a premium feature at zero cost shall be a lucrative step toward the goal.