Finding and exporting your GitHub data

What it holds

Repositories contain source files, branches, tags and the sequence of commits. Issues, pull requests, reviews, releases and discussions are related records stored outside the Git repository itself.

Where GitHub shows the size

1. As an organization owner, review Repositories or paginate GET /orgs/ORG/repos with credentials permitted to read private repositories. The API size field provides a quick inventory estimate.
2. Run git clone --mirror REPOSITORY_URL for each repository; inside each clone run git count-objects -vH and inspect size-pack.
3. Where LFS is used, run git lfs fetch --all and measure its objects separately. Sum the measured storage in GB.

Plan and admin role. Organization-wide coverage and the organization migrations API require an organization owner. Read access suffices for cloning individual repositories; token permissions must include private repositories when applicable.

Exporting the full history

1. Mirror every repository with git clone --mirror REPOSITORY_URL and retrieve LFS using git lfs fetch --all. Clone repository wikis separately where present.
2. For issues, pull requests, reviews and comments, start POST /orgs/ORG/migrations with the desired repository list.
3. Poll until the migration state is exported, then download the tar.gz archive within seven days. Avoid exclude_attachments and exclude_releases when those records are needed.
4. Personal repository owners can use the user migrations API; Enterprise Server offers ghe-migrator.

A mirror is not a copy of issues, pull requests, discussions or release assets.

Migration archives omit LFS objects, discussions and packages. Download LFS separately and treat migration output as an archive, not a supported GitHub restore package.

size-pack measures packed Git objects, not every loose object or supplementary file; measure the complete stored folders for a comprehensive disk total.

You don't need to run an export to talk to us, and there's no need to clean it first — removing personal data is part of our work.