Cost centers & budgets

In one line

A cost center groups metered usage and spending, optionally billing it to a specific Azure subscription.

A budget monitors spending and sends alerts, with the option to stop additional usage where supported and configured.

Cost centers: what can you assign? 📖 Docs

Cost centers group enterprise metered spending, including metered licences, by department or project without creating orgs or changing access. Prepaid volume and subscription billing are excluded; with Azure billing, each center can use a different Azure subscription.

Resource added	Costs counted in the cost center
👤 User	GHE/GHAS/Copilot License + AI usage
👥 Enterprise team	Same as User, automatically updated as membership changes
📦 Repository	Actions, Codespaces, Packages, Git LFS
🏢 Organization	Repo usage + GHE/GHAS/Copilot License billed to the org + AI usage from Copilot licences granted by the org

Can you belong to several cost centers? 📖 Docs

One direct assignment per resource. Adding it elsewhere moves it. Multiple team/org memberships do not split the same charge.

For licence and Copilot AI costs, the first matching cost center wins:

Priority	Billing destination
1	User’s directly assigned cost center
2	Enterprise team’s center; if several qualify, the team created first wins
3	Billed org’s cost center. Multiple orgs? GHE/GHAS: oldest org. Copilot: one selected licensing org.
4	Enterprise, shown as Enterprise Only

Verify: in the detailed usage report ↗, filter username + licence sku, then check organization and cost_center_name.

Example: Alice is directly in A and in a team in B: Copilot → A. Actions on a repo assigned to B → B, regardless of who runs them.

Reassignment affects future usage only, not historical charges.

Budget options 📖 Docs

Choose what to measure, then whose usage counts. Budgets are monthly; spending amounts are in USD. Options below are current as of 2026-10-20.

▸ Choose a budget type

Product / SKU

Product-level: a whole product, such as Actions or Codespaces.
SKU-level: one billing item, such as Codespaces storage or Code Security AI Credits.
Metered-product scopes: enterprise, organization, repository, or cost center. Org owners can budget their org or its repos.

Bundled AI credits

One paid-usage budget: Copilot, cloud agent, Spark, and Advanced Security AI SKUs.
Scopes: enterprise, org, cost center, or Users.
Copilot spending budgets cap overage, not included pool usage or license fees. Paid usage must be allowed.

Copilot per-user

User-level budget

Bundled AI credits → Users: each person's included + paid consumption.
Individual → cost center per-user → universal: most specific wins.
The cost center default is per person, not a shared pot. Individual overrides can expire, then fall back to the default.

Metered licenses

License budgets

Track metered license spending, with a license-count threshold where offered. Metered GHE license scopes: enterprise or cost center.
No budgets for prepaid volume licenses. A license budget is not the same as an AI-credit budget, and most license budgets alert without blocking.

SELECT A BUDGET ▸

Alerts or a hard stop? 📖 Docs

Enable budget alerts at 75 / 90 / 100% (as of 2026-10-20). Owners, billing managers, and added recipients are notified.

Control	At the limit
Alert-only	Usage and charges continue
Metered usage (hard)	Enable Stop usage when budget limit is reached
Copilot user-level	Always hard; $0 blocks even with pool credits left
Copilot / GHE licenses	Alerts, not a license-purchase cap
GHAS licenses (hard)	Code Security / Secret Protection: blocks new repo enablement, not existing protection

Hard budgets do not add together. Any exhausted applicable limit can block usage. A broad Actions/AI limit can also stop CI or security workflows.

⚠️ New budgets count only usage after creation. User-level alerts are not always available; also monitor cost center or enterprise usage.

Department setup: costs, budgets, pools 📖 Docs

Example, not recommended amounts: Engineering needs separate Copilot and CI controls. An enterprise owner or billing manager starts in Billing and licensing.

▸ Follow the setup

1. Allocate

Allocate costs

Cost centers → New cost center: create Engineering AI with its enterprise team, and Engineering CI with its repositories.
In a shared org, assign repos to their departments and leave the org unassigned. If teams need separate shared budgets, use separate centers; budgets cannot target teams inside one center.

2. Budget

Set monthly budgets

Budgets and alerts → New budget: set a $200 bundled AI paid-usage budget for Engineering AI and a $300 Actions budget for Engineering CI. Choose hard stops or alerts deliberately.
Add a $20 per-user Copilot budget for Engineering AI members: this counts included + paid consumption. License fees remain separate.

3. Included pool

Included AI credits

Edit Engineering AI → AI credit pool. GitHub calculates the cap from members' Copilot licenses; no manual amount.
At the cap: block or paid overage if policy permits. This is separate from the $200 budget; neither control overrides an exhausted per-user limit.

4. Verify

Verify attribution

Group Usage by cost center; check cost_center_name in the detailed report and investigate Enterprise Only.
Enterprise budgets include cost center usage by default. Explicit cost center exclusion allows independent overage, but user-level caps remain. Budget consumption resets each billing cycle.

SELECT A STEP ▸