During periods of unusual traffic, GitHub may temporarily require authentication for some clones and fetches of public repositories over HTTPS to help protect github.com’s availability. If an operation is affected, it will fail with a message indicating that authentication is required.

To continue, authenticate and retry the operation. You can also wait and retry without authentication after the temporary protection has been lifted.

GitHub applies this protection as narrowly as possible using signals associated with anomalous traffic. Because legitimate and anomalous traffic can sometimes share those signals, legitimate unauthenticated operations may occasionally be affected. This is not a general authentication requirement for public repositories.

The following operations are unaffected:

• Authenticated Git operations over HTTPS
• Git operations over SSH
• Pushes
• Unrelated GitHub web and API traffic

For more reliable automated clones and fetches, configure authentication:

• GitHub Actions: Use the built-in GITHUB_TOKEN.
• Other CI systems: Prefer a GitHub App installation access token. A personal access token can also be used.
• Operations that cannot authenticate: Retry after the temporary protection has been lifted.

This protection applies to repositories on github.com across all plans.

For setup instructions, see about authentication to GitHub and managing remote repositories.