Plain vs GitHub.

// Coverage

GitHub does one job. Plain is the whole setup.

Seven surfaces every software team ends up paying for, one way or another. Here is what each product actually covers.

GitHub fully covers 3 of the seven surfaces. Plain covers all seven on one seat.

// Credit where due

Where GitHub is genuinely good.

• It is where open source lives. Network effects on contributors, stars, and discovery are real and Plain does not pretend otherwise.
• Actions has the largest marketplace of reusable CI steps anywhere.
• Copilot is a genuinely strong code assistant, and reviewers know the pull request UI by muscle memory.

The catch.

Teams on GitHub still buy Linear or Jira because GitHub Issues stalls at labels and milestones, still buy Notion because the wiki is a sidecar nobody updates, and still buy Slack because Discussions is a forum. You end up paying for GitHub plus three other tools and gluing them together with webhooks. Plain ships the tracker, the docs, and the chat as real products that already know about your code.

// Pricing

One seat price vs a stack of them.

Add up your whole stack in the savings calculator

// FAQ

Common questions.

Is Plain a GitHub alternative?

Yes. Plain hosts Git repositories with pull requests, reviews, and protected branches, and adds the issue tracker, docs, chat, CI, package registry, and AI agents that GitHub either approximates or does not have.

Can I move my repositories from GitHub to Plain?

Yes. Repositories are plain Git, so you push your existing history to Plain and keep every commit, branch, and tag. You can mirror both during the transition.

How does Plain pricing compare to GitHub?

GitHub Team is $4 per user per month for the first year, then $21 on Enterprise for the controls most teams grow into, with CI minutes billed on top. Plain Pro is $24 per user per month with all seven surfaces and CI minutes included.