If you have ever wondered how to backup GitHub repositories, you are not alone. Every developer and engineering team that relies on GitHub as their primary source control platform should have a backup strategy in place. Losing access to your repositories -- whether through accidental deletion, a compromised account, or a GitHub outage -- can set a project back weeks or end it entirely. This guide walks you through exactly why GitHub backups matter, the methods available, and how to automate the entire process so you never have to think about it again.

Why You Need to Backup Your GitHub Repositories

Many developers assume their code is safe because it lives on GitHub. GitHub is a reliable platform, but treating it as your sole backup is a serious risk. Here is why.

Accidental Deletion and Human Error

A mistyped command, an accidental force push, or a deleted repository can wipe out months of work. GitHub does not offer a recycle bin for repositories. Once a repo is deleted by an owner, it is gone unless GitHub support can recover it within a narrow window -- and that is not guaranteed.

Compromised Accounts

If an attacker gains access to your GitHub account, they can delete repositories, overwrite branches, or exfiltrate private code. Two-factor authentication reduces the risk, but credential leaks and token exposure still happen regularly. A backup stored outside of GitHub gives you a recovery path that does not depend on the compromised platform.

GitHub Outages and Availability

GitHub has experienced multiple significant outages over the years. During those windows, your team cannot access code, review pull requests, or deploy. If your CI/CD pipeline depends on GitHub and you have no local or external backup, your entire development workflow stalls.

Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

Industries like finance, healthcare, and government contracting often require data redundancy and documented backup procedures. Relying solely on a third-party SaaS platform without independent backups may not satisfy audit requirements. Having your own copies of repository data stored in infrastructure you control is often a compliance necessity.

GitHub's Terms of Service

This is the detail most teams overlook. GitHub's Terms of Service do not guarantee the preservation of your data. They provide the service as-is. If data is lost due to a bug, infrastructure failure, or policy enforcement action, GitHub is not obligated to restore it. Your code is your responsibility.

Methods to Backup GitHub Repositories

There are three primary approaches to backing up your GitHub repositories, each with different tradeoffs in complexity, coverage, and reliability.

Method 1: Manual Backup with Git Clone

The simplest way to create a GitHub backup is to clone your repositories to a local machine or external drive. This works well for individual developers with a small number of repos.

Step-by-Step: Clone a Repository

1. Open your terminal.

2. Navigate to the directory where you want to store the backup.

3. Run the clone command with the --mirror flag to get a full copy including all branches, tags, and refs.

# Create a backup directory
mkdir -p ~/github-backups
cd ~/github-backups
Clone a repository as a mirror (full backup including all refs)
git clone --mirror https://github.com/your-username/your-repo.git
To update an existing mirror backup later
cd your-repo.git
git remote update

The --mirror flag is important. A standard git clone only pulls the default branch and sets up tracking. A mirror clone copies every ref, giving you a true backup of the entire repository state.

Backing Up Multiple Repositories Manually

If you have more than a handful of repositories, you can list them and clone each one:

# Clone multiple repos
for repo in repo-one repo-two repo-three; do
git clone --mirror "https://github.com/your-username/$repo.git" ~/github-backups/"$repo.git"
done

Limitations of manual backups:

• You have to remember to do it.

• It does not scale past a few repositories.

• It does not capture GitHub-specific data like issues, pull requests, or wiki content.

• There is no scheduling, verification, or alerting.

For a deeper dive into backing up all of your repositories at once, see our guide on how to backup all GitHub repositories.

Method 2: Scripted Backup Using the GitHub API

For teams with dozens or hundreds of repositories, a scripted approach using the GitHub REST API provides more coverage and automation potential. This method lets you dynamically discover all repositories in your account or organization and back them up programmatically.

Step-by-Step: Build a Backup Script

Prerequisites:

• A GitHub Personal Access Token (classic) with repo scope. Generate one at github.com/settings/tokens.

• git, curl, and jq installed on your system.

The script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

Configuration
GITHUB_TOKEN="your-personal-access-token"
GITHUB_USER="your-username"
BACKUP_DIR="$HOME/github-backups/$(date +%Y-%m-%d)"
API_URL="https://api.github.com"
mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
echo "Fetching repository list..."
Fetch all repositories (handles pagination up to 100 per page)
page=1
repos=()
while true; do
response=$(curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" 

"$API_URL/user/repos?per_page=100&page=$page&affiliation=owner")
Extract clone URLs
page_repos=$(echo "$response" | jq -r '.[].clone_url')
if [ -z "$page_repos" ]; then
break
fi
repos+=($page_repos)
((page++))
done
echo "Found ${#repos[@]} repositories."
Clone or update each repository
for repo_url in "${repos[@]}"; do
repo_name=$(basename "$repo_url" .git)
target="$BACKUP_DIR/$repo_name.git"
if [ -d "$target" ]; then
echo "Updating $repo_name..."
cd "$target"
git remote update
cd "$BACKUP_DIR"
else
echo "Cloning $repo_name..."
git clone --mirror "$repo_url" "$target"
fi
done
echo "Backup complete. ${#repos[@]} repositories saved to $BACKUP_DIR"

Save this as backup-github.sh, make it executable with chmod +x backup-github.sh, and run it.

For Organization Repositories

To back up an entire GitHub organization, change the API endpoint:

# Replace the user repos endpoint with the org endpoint
ORG_NAME="your-org"
response=$(curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" 

"$API_URL/orgs/$ORG_NAME/repos?per_page=100&page=$page")

Adding Metadata Backups

Git clone only captures the repository contents. To back up GitHub-specific metadata like issues, pull requests, and releases, you can extend the script:

# Backup issues for a repository
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" 

"$API_URL/repos/$GITHUB_USER/$repo_name/issues?state=all&per_page=100" 

> "$target/issues.json"

Backup pull requests
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $GITHUB_TOKEN" 

"$API_URL/repos/$GITHUB_USER/$repo_name/pulls?state=all&per_page=100" 

> "$target/pulls.json"

Limitations of scripted backups:

• You are responsible for maintaining the script as the GitHub API evolves.

• Handling pagination, rate limits, and error recovery adds complexity.

• You need to set up your own scheduling (cron), monitoring, and alerting.

• Storing tokens securely in scripts requires additional tooling.

• No built-in verification that backups completed successfully or are restorable.

For a comparison of different approaches and tools, check out our roundup of the best GitHub backup tools.

Method 3: Automated Backup with Gitbackups

If you want reliable, scheduled GitHub backups without building and maintaining your own infrastructure, an automated backup service handles the heavy lifting. Gitbackups is purpose-built for this -- it connects to your GitHub account, backs up all your repositories on a schedule you define, and stores them in S3-compatible storage.

How Gitbackups Works

1. Connect your GitHub account -- Link via access token, SSH key, or OAuth. Gitbackups discovers all your repositories automatically.

2. Choose your schedule -- Set backup frequency: daily, weekly, or custom intervals depending on your plan.

3. Select your storage -- Backups are sent to S3-compatible storage (AWS S3, Backblaze B2, MinIO, or any S3-compatible provider).

4. Monitor and verify -- Gitbackups tracks every backup run, alerts you on failures, and lets you verify backup integrity.

There is no script to maintain, no cron jobs to debug, and no API pagination to handle. The service is designed for teams that need their GitHub data backed up consistently without dedicating engineering time to building a custom solution.

When Automated Backup Makes Sense

• You have more than 10 repositories.

• You need backups to happen on a reliable schedule without manual intervention.

• Compliance requires documented, verifiable backup procedures.

• You want backups stored in infrastructure you control (your own S3 bucket).

• Your team does not want to spend time maintaining backup scripts.

Where to Store Your GitHub Backups

The backup method you choose is only half the equation. Where you store those backups matters just as much.

Amazon S3

The most common choice for automated backups. S3 provides high durability (99.999999999%), versioning, lifecycle policies, and fine-grained access controls. Most backup tools, including Gitbackups, support S3 natively.

Backblaze B2

A cost-effective alternative to S3 with an S3-compatible API. B2 is significantly cheaper for storage-heavy workloads and works with any tool that supports the S3 protocol.

Google Cloud Storage

Another solid option, especially if your infrastructure already runs on GCP. Offers similar durability guarantees and integrates well with Google Cloud IAM.

Local or NAS Storage

Suitable for individual developers or air-gapped environments. The risk is that local drives fail, and NAS devices are still a single point of failure unless replicated.

General Guidelines

• Store backups in a different provider and region than your primary code hosting.

• Enable versioning so you can recover from corrupted backups.

• Use encryption at rest and in transit.

• Test restoring from your backups regularly.

We will be publishing detailed guides on each storage option in future articles. For now, the key principle is: your backup should not share a single point of failure with the data it is protecting.

How to Schedule and Automate GitHub Backups

A backup that depends on someone remembering to run it is not a backup strategy. Here is how to automate each method.

Scheduling Manual or Scripted Backups with Cron

If you are using the bash script approach from Method 2, you can schedule it with cron:

# Open the crontab editor
crontab -e

Add a daily backup at 2:00 AM
0 2 * * * /path/to/backup-github.sh >> /var/log/github-backup.log 2>&1

For more robust scheduling, consider using systemd timers instead of cron, which provide better logging and failure handling:

# /etc/systemd/system/github-backup.timer
[Unit]
Description=Daily GitHub Backup

[Timer]
OnCalendar=--* 02:00:00
Persistent=true
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Scheduling with Gitbackups

With Gitbackups, scheduling is built in. You configure the backup frequency through the dashboard when you connect your account. The service handles execution, retries on failure, and sends notifications if something goes wrong. There is nothing to install on your servers and no cron jobs to maintain.

Monitoring and Alerting

Regardless of the method you choose, make sure you have monitoring in place:

• For scripts: Pipe output to a log file and set up a simple check that verifies the log was updated recently. Tools like Healthchecks.io can monitor cron jobs.

• For Gitbackups: Monitoring and alerting are built into the platform. You receive notifications on backup failures automatically.

How to Verify and Restore GitHub Backups

A backup you have never tested restoring is not a backup. It is a hope. Here is how to verify your backups are actually usable.

Restoring from a Mirror Clone

# Create a new repository from a mirror backup
cd ~/github-backups/your-repo.git

Verify the backup contents
git log --oneline -10
git branch -a
git tag -l
Push the backup to a new remote (e.g., a new GitHub repo)
git push --mirror https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-restored.git

Verification Checklist

• Can you clone the backup to a fresh directory?

• Do all branches and tags exist?

• Does the commit history match the expected state?

• Can you push the backup to a new remote and use it as a working repository?

• If you backed up metadata (issues, PRs), can you parse and read the JSON files?

Run through this checklist periodically -- quarterly at minimum. For a full walkthrough of backup verification and disaster recovery, see our guide on GitHub backup and restore.

Choosing the Right GitHub Backup Strategy

Here is a quick comparison to help you decide which method fits your situation:

For most teams, the right answer is to start with an automated solution and save engineering time for your actual product. Gitbackups is built specifically for this use case -- connect your GitHub account, set a schedule, and your repositories are backed up to your own S3-compatible storage automatically.

Summary

Backing up your GitHub repositories is not optional. GitHub does not guarantee your data, accounts get compromised, and human error is inevitable. The good news is that setting up a reliable backup strategy is straightforward:

1. Understand the risk. Your code on GitHub is not automatically backed up. You are responsible for redundancy.

2. Pick a method. Manual cloning works for a few repos. Scripts work if you have the time to maintain them. Automated tools like Gitbackups eliminate the maintenance entirely.

3. Choose the right storage. Use S3-compatible storage in a different provider or region than your primary hosting.

4. Automate and schedule. A backup you have to remember to run is a backup that will eventually stop happening.

5. Test your restores. Regularly verify that your backups are complete and restorable.

If you want to set up automated GitHub backups in under five minutes, try Gitbackups. Connect your account, pick a schedule, and your repositories are backed up to S3-compatible storage -- no scripts, no cron jobs, no maintenance.