Creating an account on GitHub

Create a personal account to get started with GitHub.

In this article

About your personal account on GitHub

To get started with GitHub.com, you need to have a personal account and a verified email address.

When creating a free account on GitHub.com, you can also authenticate with Google or Apple - which are the supported social login providers. For iOS users, even if you have enabled the setting "Hide My Email addresses" for your Apple account, using social login will result in creating a new GitHub account.

Every person who uses GitHub signs in to a user account. Your user account is your identity on GitHub and has a username and profile. For example, see @octocat's profile.

Later, you can explore the different types of accounts that GitHub offers, and decide if you need a billing plan. For more information, see Types of GitHub accounts and GitHub's plans.

Note

The steps in this article don't apply to Enterprise Managed Users and users on GitHub Enterprise Server. If your GitHub account has been created by your company, you can skip this article.

Signing up for a new personal account

  1. Navigate to https://github.com/signup.
  2. Alternatively, click on Continue with Google to sign up using social login.
  3. Follow the prompts to create your personal account.

During sign up, you'll be asked to verify your email address.

Some enterprises create managed user accounts for their users. You can't sign up for a personal account with an email address that's already verified for a managed user account.

If you're having problems verifying your email address, there are some troubleshooting steps you can take. For more information, see Troubleshooting email verification.

Troubleshooting signup errors

If you see This email can't be used or We couldn't create your account try the following:

  1. Use a different browser, or clear your browser's cookies and cache.
  2. Disable your browser extensions.
  3. Sign up on a different device and network.
  4. Wait a while, then try again.

If you see This email can't be used, try a different email address or email domain. After you create your account, you can add or change email addresses. See Changing your primary email address.

These suggestions may not resolve the issue. GitHub Support can't investigate individual account verification failures during signup.

Next steps

We strongly recommend that you configure 2FA for your account. 2FA is an extra layer of security that can help keep your account secure. For more information, see Configuring two-factor authentication.

Further reading