Why developers are switching away from GitHub in 2026

Three reasons drive the 2026 migration:

1. CI minutes cap: GitHub Team includes only 2,000 CI minutes per month. Enterprise gets 50K. EmpireGit charges nothing per minute when you bring your own runners.
2. AI-code-search lock-in: Copilot pricing escalated to $39/user in 2026 enterprise. EmpireGit ships native LLM-aware code review at no add-on cost.
3. Privacy concerns: After the 2025 MS-OpenAI training-data lawsuit, regulated industries (healthcare, finance, legal) require Git platforms with explicit BAAs and US-only data residency.

EmpireGit vs GitHub Team vs GitLab Premium

| Feature | GitHub Team | GitLab Premium | EmpireGit Team | |---|---|---|---| | Per user / month | $4 | $29 | $29 | | CI minutes included | 2,000 | 10,000 | unlimited (BYO runners) | | Private repos | unlimited | unlimited | unlimited | | LFS storage | 1GB | 10GB | 500GB | | SSO | $21/user add-on | included | included | | Self-hosted runners | extra | included | included | | AI code review | $19/user add-on | $39/user add-on | included |

The 30% undercut

We benchmarked GitHub Enterprise ($21/user) and GitLab Ultimate ($99/user). EmpireGit Enterprise at $99 includes everything those tiers bundle plus self-hosted SAML and BAA — at parity pricing but with no minute caps.

For most 10-user teams, the math is: GitHub Team ($40/mo) + GitHub Actions overages ($120-300/mo for normal CI usage) = $160-340. EmpireGit Team at $290 with unlimited Actions saves money once you exceed 2,500 CI minutes (typical for any active codebase).

Migration path

EmpireGit ships a one-click GitHub importer (issues, PRs, wiki, releases, all branches). Migration completes in under 4 hours for repos under 10GB. We can also accept BitBucket and GitLab exports.

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