Lost in the forest

[DaveEveritt]

Hi everyone,

I had an education account as a lecturer. I still want to keep access to my repos etc. even though I’m not actively using them for teaching right now, but started getting "We are having a problem billing your account" - I have never paid, never will, but can’t find out what I’m being billed for, how to stop it without losing access to repos (which ones???) and just get lost in the massive user-nightmare forest of text that is supposed to be "help". SO… like. help.

[DevFoxxx]

Hi Dave! Don't panic: you are not going to lose your code. This 'billing nightmare' usually happens when an Education coupon expires and GitHub tries to revert your account to a paid 'Pro' plan instead of the 'Free' one.

Here is the quick way out of the forest:

1. The Repos are Safe: Even if you don't pay, GitHub never deletes your repositories. At worst, if they were 'Private' and you exceed the free limits, they might become 'Read-only' or public, but your code stays there.
2. Downgrade to Free: Go to your Account Settings > Billing and plans > Plans and usage. Look for a button that says 'Downgrade to Free'. This stops the billing system from looking for a credit card.
3. Check Organizations: If you were teaching, check if the billing error is coming from an Organization you created for your students. You might need to downgrade the Organization account separately from your personal one.
4. Why the error? It’s likely GitHub is trying to charge you for the 'GitHub Pro' features that were free while you were a verified lecturer. Switching back to the 'Free' tier manually will silence those emails.

Just downgrade to the standard Free plan; you’ll keep your repos and the emails will stop!

[DaveEveritt]

thanks, found and clicked the tiny print (at the bottom of one of the forest of screens!) "are you sure you don’t just want to downgrade to free"… now faced with the following issues:

1. one repo (decision-maker) seems to have a $0.09 fee (I’m in the UK so this is almost nothing) for "Billable usage / Gross metered usage for March 1 - March 30, 2026" WAT? Never been charged for just pushing code before! What did I do to incur this teeny fee?

2. Under my GitHub Free plan I read "This account is disabled because we have not been able to charge it for another month. (…) "To resolve this issue, please update your payment method." Errr., no thank you - it’s a free account? Disabled in what way?

3. I see that "Pages for static website hosting" i.e. what I once knew as "GitHub Pages" for many years is now no longer part of the service. When did this happen? I have a few projects in test on GitHub pages.

I'm now a solo (private and now retired) developer just sharing projects with my wife. We both formerly had education accounts (she still has). I’ve occasionally contributed small updates to other projects, but this isn’t a regular thing. I’ve been a GitHub user for what must be over a decade and have used it when teaching students, but now as a retired educator (although I still have a uni status) this is really driving me away to look elsewhere, however painful that potential future transition may be!

[DevFoxxx]

Let me address your three new questions:
1. The $0.09 charge — That tiny fee is almost certainly from GitHub Actions minutes or Git LFS storage. Even on a free account, if you exceed the monthly free quota (2,000 Actions minutes or 1 GB LFS), GitHub charges for the overage. Check Settings → Billing → Usage to see exactly which service triggered it. You can set a spending limit of $0 to prevent any future charges.
2. The “account disabled” message — This sometimes lingers for a few hours after downgrading, even though your account is technically back on Free. If it’s still showing tomorrow, I’d recommend contacting GitHub Support directly at support.github.com — they can manually clear the billing flag on their end.
3. GitHub Pages is still free! — Don’t worry, it hasn’t gone anywhere. Pages for public repositories is still included in the Free plan. If your Pages projects are on public repos, they’ll keep working fine. The confusion might come from the billing page listing it as a “Pro” feature — that refers to Pages on private repos only.

[DaveEveritt]

Thanks, that helps. However, I originally came here through the "support.github" page. I checked my billings settings and all have a limit of $0, yet I’m still seeing the banner "We are having a problem billing your account…" at the top of GitHub pages. Any "help" pages are so convoluted and wordy that they’re almost impossible to make sense of.

There was once a simpler user interface, but admin on GitHub has become almost unusable. Despite trying the suggestions, I’m kind of losing the will to even try spend even more time trying to solve this issue!

[krillmango]

A financial instrument is usually to associate IRL identity but as an educator that's moot. Consider a virtual instrument so YOU alone control the limits.