Free tier ran out at 7 units, not 120 listed as free per month

[meekrob]

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Since I began using Codespaces last fall, I have always used the 2 Core model and never come up against the limit.

I see now I have done it in the middle of the month, with far less accrued cost, and 7.21 hours listed under Billing Usage under settings. After requesting a detailed usage report, no fields reflect that number or are anywhere close to the 120 hours listed in the documentation.

Has Github changed the quota of the free tier without updating the docs? If not, how do I see my usage in the same units as the allottment (it can't be 7.21)?

Thank you.

[JulianCeleita]

It sounds like you're running into the classic 'Core Hours' vs. 'Clock Hours' distinction. To answer your questions:

1. Has the quota changed?
   No, the free tier for personal accounts still includes 120 Core hours. However, since you are using a 2-core model, you are consuming 2 core hours for every 1 hour of real time (Clock hours) you spend coding. This means your actual limit is 60 hours of runtime per month.

2. What does the '7.21' mean?
   The 7.21 you see in the Billing settings is likely your accumulated storage usage (measured in GB-months or GB-hours) rather than your compute hours. GitHub stops your Codespaces if either your compute hours or your storage quota (15 GB) is reached.

3. How to see usage in the same units?
   In your Billing & Plans page, look for the 'Codespaces' section. It should show two separate progress bars:

Compute: Measured in Core hours (will show out of 120).

Storage: Measured in GB-months (will show out of 15).

If your report doesn't match, check if you have any unused Codespaces or prebuilds taking up storage. Even if you aren't coding, a stopped Codespace still 'leaks' storage quota every hour it exists.

Hope this clears it up!

[meekrob]

Thanks a lot for the reply! I checked my repos and I don't have any data in them, so it must come from the container and installed software. My usage report doesn't indicate that much storage being used for the one I looked at, but it might be for another one.

Thanks again!

[dbuzatto]

Hi,

According to GitHub’s public documentation, personal accounts still receive 120 core hours per month for Codespaces on eligible plans. There hasn’t been any official announcement about reducing this quota.

A few things to double-check:

• Core hours vs. wall-clock hours
  A 2-core machine uses 2 core hours per hour.
  So 7.2 hours on a 2-core machine = ~14.4 core hours.

• Machine type changes
  If a 4-core (or larger) machine was used at any point, core hours are consumed faster.

• Storage usage
  Persistent storage is billed separately and can impact limits.

• Account type
  Free allocation differs between Free, Pro, and organization accounts.

• Spending limit settings
  If your spending limit is set to $0, Codespaces will stop once the free allocation is considered exhausted.

If your Billing → Usage numbers don’t match the documentation, I recommend opening a GitHub Support ticket and attaching your detailed usage report. They can verify the internal accounting for your account.

There’s no public indication that the 120 core-hour free quota has been reduced.

[meekrob]

Ah, OK. This is helpful, thank you. I shouldn't have deleted my other Codespaces this morning before running the usage reports on them.

[dbuzatto]

Glad it helped 🙂

Just for future reference — even if a Codespace is deleted, the core hours it consumed during the month are still counted toward your monthly allocation. Unfortunately, once deleted, you can’t retroactively inspect its detailed usage.

If you run into this again, you can:

• Check Billing → Usage before deleting active Codespaces
• Export usage reports periodically if you're tracking consumption closely
• Set a spending limit slightly above $0 to avoid unexpected hard stops

If everything is clear now and your question is resolved, feel free to mark the answer as accepted so others with the same issue can find it more easily.

Happy coding