Dependabot Pricing in 2026
Plans, hidden costs, and alternatives compared
Is Dependabot worth the price?
Dependabot itself is completely free on every GitHub plan — alerts, security updates, and version updates cost nothing for both public and private repositories.
The catch is that Dependabot is part of a broader GitHub security ecosystem where the premium features carry steep per-committer pricing. GitHub Secret Protection ($19/committer/month) adds push protection and advanced secret scanning, while GitHub Code Security ($30/committer/month) adds CodeQL, Copilot Autofix, and custom Dependabot auto-triage rules.
For most teams, free Dependabot covers 80% of dependency security needs. The paid tiers matter when you need proactive secret leak prevention or AI-powered vulnerability fixing at scale.
Pricing Plans
Free
Free
Included with GitHub
- Automated dependency updates
- Security vulnerability alerts
- Pull request automation
- Multi-language support
- Grouping updates
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Dependabot alerts and updates are free, but acting on them at scale requires developer time. A large monorepo can generate 50+ PRs per week — without auto-merge rules or triage automation (paid), each one requires manual review
Custom auto-triage rules for Dependabot require GitHub Code Security at $30/committer/month. Without them, you get the same priority for a critical RCE and a low-severity regex DoS
GitHub Code Security pricing is per active committer, not per user. Anyone who pushes a commit to a protected repo in the past 90 days counts — including contractors, bots, and one-time contributors
Dependabot version updates can create noisy PRs for fast-moving ecosystems (npm, PyPI). Without grouped updates (available on all plans) or auto-triage (paid), your PR queue gets flooded
Dependabot only covers dependencies declared in supported package manifests. Vendored dependencies, Git submodules, or pinned Docker base images require separate tooling
Secret scanning push protection — which blocks commits containing API keys before they reach the repo — is not part of Dependabot and costs $19/committer/month via GitHub Secret Protection
Private vulnerability reporting and security advisories are free, but security campaigns (coordinated org-wide fix drives) require the Enterprise plan plus Code Security add-on
How Dependabot Compares
10-person dev team with 20 private repos, managing dependency security for 12 months
Which Plan Do You Need?
Dependabot alerts, security updates, and version updates are free for all repositories — public and private. No setup beyond a dependabot.yml file. This alone catches known CVEs in your dependency tree and opens automated PRs to fix them
Custom auto-triage rules let you auto-dismiss low-severity alerts, prioritize critical ones, and route fixes to the right team. CodeQL adds static analysis that catches vulnerabilities Dependabot cannot — like insecure usage patterns of safe libraries
Security campaigns, organization-wide dashboards, and SARIF integration let you track dependency risk across the entire org. Copilot Autofix generates code fixes for 90% of alert types, dramatically reducing the time developers spend on remediation
Our Recommendation
Worth it if...
You already use GitHub. There is zero reason not to enable free Dependabot on every repository — it takes 5 minutes to configure and catches known vulnerabilities automatically. The paid Code Security add-on ($30/committer/mo) becomes worth it at 50+ repos where manual triage is unsustainable, or when you need CodeQL static analysis to catch vulnerabilities that dependency scanning alone misses.
Skip if...
You are not on GitHub. Dependabot only works with GitHub repositories — if your code lives on GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps, use Renovate (works everywhere) or Snyk instead. Also skip the paid security add-ons if your team is under 10 developers — the free Dependabot alerts plus a simple auto-merge policy for patch updates covers most small team needs.
Negotiation tips
Dependabot is free and non-negotiable. For GitHub Code Security and Secret Protection, enterprise agreements (100+ seats) often bundle security products at a discount. Ask for a combined rate below the sticker $49/committer/month total. If you are evaluating Snyk or Mend, use their quotes as leverage — GitHub will sometimes offer a first-year discount to keep security tooling in-platform.
