This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2021-09-23. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Repository permission levels for an organization

You can customize access to each repository in your organization with granular permission levels, giving people access to the features and tasks they need.

People with admin permissions can manage individual and team access to an organization-owned repository.

Permission levels for repositories owned by an organization

You can give organization members, outside collaborators, and teams of people different levels of access to repositories owned by an organization. Each permission level progressively increases access to a repository's content and settings. Choose the level that best fits each person or team's role in your project without giving people more access to the project than they need.

From least access to most access, the permission levels for an organization repository are:

  • Read: Recommended for non-code contributors who want to view or discuss your project
  • Triage: Recommended for contributors who need to proactively manage issues and pull requests without write access
  • Write: Recommended for contributors who actively push to your project
  • Maintain: Recommended for project managers who need to manage the repository without access to sensitive or destructive actions
  • Admin: Recommended for people who need full access to the project, including sensitive and destructive actions like managing security or deleting a repository

Organization owners can set base permissions that apply to all members of an organization when accessing any of the organization's repositories. For more information, see "Setting base permissions for an organization."

Organization owners can also choose to further limit access to certain settings and actions across the organization. For more information on options for specific settings, see "Managing organization settings."

In addition to managing organization-level settings, organization owners have admin permissions for every repository owned by the organization. For more information, see "Permission levels for an organization."

Warning: When someone adds a deploy key to a repository, any user who has the private key can read from or write to the repository (depending on the key settings), even if they're later removed from the organization.

Repository access for each permission level

Note: Repository permissions required to use security features are listed in "Permission requirements for security features" below.

Repository actionReadTriageWriteMaintainAdmin
Pull from the person or team's assigned repositoriesXXXXX
Fork the person or team's assigned repositoriesXXXXX
Edit and delete their own commentsXXXXX
Open issuesXXXXX
Close issues they opened themselvesXXXXX
Reopen issues they closed themselvesXXXXX
Have an issue assigned to themXXXXX
Send pull requests from forks of the team's assigned repositoriesXXXXX
Submit reviews on pull requestsXXXXX
View published releasesXXXXX
Edit wikis in public repositoriesX