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GitLab

Free user limit (FREE SAAS)

A five-user limit applies to newly created top-level namespaces with private visibility on GitLab SaaS. For existing namespaces created before December 28, 2022, the limit was applied on June 13, 2023.

When the five-user limit is applied, top-level private namespaces exceeding the user limit are placed in a read-only state. These namespaces cannot write new data to repositories, Git Large File Storage (LFS), packages, or registries. For the full list of restricted actions, see Read-only namespaces.

Manage members in your namespace

To help manage your free user limit, you can view and manage the total number of members across all projects and groups in your namespace.

Prerequisite:

  • You must have the Owner role for the group.
  1. On the left sidebar, at the top, select Search GitLab ({search}) to find your group.
  2. On the left sidebar, select Settings > Usage Quotas.
  3. To view all members, select the Seats tab.
  4. To remove a member, select Remove user.

If you need more time to manage your members, or to try GitLab features with a team of more than five members, you can start a trial. A trial lasts for 30 days and includes an unlimited number of members.

Determining namespace user counts

Every unique user of a top-level namespace with private visibility counts towards the five-user limit. This includes every user of a group, subgroup, and project within a namespace.

For example:

The group example-1 has:

  • One group owner, A.
  • One subgroup called subgroup-1 with one member, B.
    • subgroup-1 inherits A as a member from example-1.
  • One project in subgroup-1 called project-1 with two members, C and D.
    • project-1 inherits A and B as members from subgroup-1.

The namespace example-1 has four unique members: A, B, C, and D. Because example-1 has only four unique members, it is not impacted by the five-user limit.

The group example-2 has:

  • One group owner, A.
  • One subgroup called subgroup-2 with one member, B.
    • subgroup-2 inherits A as a member from example-2.
  • One project in subgroup-2 called project-2a with two members, C and D.
    • project-2a inherits A and B as members from subgroup-2.
  • One project in subgroup-2 called project-2b with two members, E and F.
    • project-2b inherits A and B as members from subgroup-2.

The namespace example-2 has six unique members: A, B, C, D, E, and F. Because example-2 has six unique users, it is impacted by the five-user limit.

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