GitHub Multiple Accounts and the Terms of Service: One Free Account per Person

Does GitHub allow more than one account per person? #

Not a second free account of your own. GitHub's Terms of Service (effective date shown on the page: 27 April 2026; read 3 October 2026) state that "One person or legal entity may maintain no more than one free Account". The one exception is a machine account that you also control, as long as it is used only for running a machine. GitHub's own docs go further: they recommend a single personal account for all your work on GitHub.com, and suggest combining accounts if you currently use more than one personal account that you created for yourself.

So "two accounts on one computer" is acceptable in specific shapes: a personal account plus a machine account, or a personal account plus an account your employer provisions for you. A second personal account of your own is not one of them.

What do the Terms and policies say, rule by rule? #

Which kinds of second account does GitHub describe as legitimate? #

• A machine account. For automation, such as continuous integration. The Terms say multiple users may direct its actions, but its owner is ultimately responsible for them. GitHub's deploy-keys page describes a machine user as an account that is not used by a human, and says creating a single one for automation is fine while automated account creation is not.
• An employer-provisioned account. If your employer creates and manages an account for you in an enterprise that uses Enterprise Managed Users, it is a managed user account. GitHub says it cannot create public content or contribute to repositories outside the enterprise, so open source work stays with your personal account. GitHub documents the account switcher for moving between the two.
• An organization. An organization is a shared account that nobody signs in to; each person signs in to their own account. See team access without shared logins.

What if you already have two personal accounts? #

GitHub's docs describe merging as a manual job:

1. Transfer repositories from the account you want to delete to the account you want to keep. Issues, pull requests and wikis move with them.
2. Update the remote URLs in local clones of the moved repositories.
3. Delete the account you no longer want to use.
4. To attribute past commits to the account you keep, add the email address used for those commits to it.

Read the side effects first. GitHub's reference page says organization and repository permissions are not transferable, achievements cannot be transferred, and deleting an account deletes the repositories, forks of private repositories, wikis, issues, pull requests and Pages sites it still owns. The username becomes available to anyone after 90 days.

What happens when a rule is broken, and how do you appeal? #

GitHub's Acceptable Use Policies reserve the decision on how to respond to a violation to GitHub; the actions they name are suspending or terminating the account and removing content. The Terms add that GitHub can suspend or end your access to all or part of the website at any time, without needing a reason or advance notice. The Community Guidelines list more responses, including hiding an account or organization from public view and suspending it.

The route GitHub documents for a disabled or restricted account is the Appeal and Reinstatement form. According to that page:

• you can seek reinstatement or appeal a moderation decision for up to six months after the decision;
• staff review what you submit to decide whether there is enough to justify reinstatement or an appeal;
• GitHub may reinstate an account where the user agrees to follow the policies going forward and has made the changes needed to address the violation.

If you simply lose access, the recovery policy says GitHub offers no social or ID verification route. A replacement account is not a route any of these pages describe, and it would run into the one-free-account sentence in the Terms.

How do you stay inside the rules? #

1. Keep one personal account per person. Extra identities should come from an employer-managed account or a machine account.
2. Never share a login. Give teammates their own accounts and organization roles instead.
3. Use a machine account, tokens or deploy keys for automation, and keep automated activity away from starring, following or other actions the policy lists as abuse.
4. Do not use someone else's token or credentials to get into an account.
5. Re-read the Terms before big changes. The page shows its effective date, and policies change.
6. Keep 2FA and recovery details current, because GitHub Support will not restore a 2FA-protected account if you lose your credentials. The sign-in checks guide covers recovery.

Where ADSSPEED fits #

ADSSPEED does not change what GitHub allows. It is a desktop app for Windows and macOS that manages many browser profiles, where each profile keeps its own cookies, local data and browser settings. That helps people who legitimately hold more than one GitHub identity, such as a personal account and an employer-provisioned one, keep them apart. Use only accounts you own or are authorised to manage. ADSSPEED is not affiliated with GitHub.