Regular GitHub works great until your security team discovers developers are committing AWS keys, ex-employees still have access to production code, and you need to explain to auditors why you can't track who changed what. That's when you get GitHub Enterprise.
Here's how it works: your enterprise account sits at the top and manages all your GitHub orgs underneath. You can enforce policies across everything without logging into twelve different places.
GitHub Enterprise Cloud costs $21/user/month and gives you the enterprise controls your compliance team demands. GitHub Enterprise Server costs the same but runs on your own infrastructure - useful if you're paranoid about the cloud or have air-gap requirements.
The Real Difference: User Management That Doesn't Suck
The killer feature is Enterprise Managed Users (EMU). Instead of asking developers to create GitHub accounts and hoping they use their work email, EMU integrates with your Active Directory. When someone joins the company, they get GitHub access automatically. When they quit or get fired, their access disappears instantly.
I've worked at places where fired employees kept repository access for months. Hell, one place I know had an intern from 2019 who could still clone production code in 2023. EMU fixes this nightmare by tying everything to your identity provider - when someone gets fired, their access dies instantly. No more panicked "oh shit" moments during access reviews.
Enterprise accounts let you manage multiple GitHub organizations from one dashboard. Instead of logging into twelve different GitHub orgs to update security policies, you do it once.
This matters more than it sounds. I've worked with companies that had 40+ GitHub organizations because different teams kept creating new orgs for "isolation." Each had completely different security settings. Nightmare to audit.
Security Features That Actually Catch Real Problems
GitHub Advanced Security catches the stupid mistakes that cause data breaches. Secret scanning blocks commits containing API keys, database passwords, and other credentials. The push protection literally prevents the commit from happening - developers can't accidentally commit their .env file.
Code scanning with CodeQL catches the stupid shit your code review missed. Found SQL injection in code that three senior engineers had already signed off on at my last job - makes you feel great about your peer review process. The Copilot Autofix suggestions actually work about 70% of the time, which beats Stack Overflow copy-paste.
The code scanning interface dumps vulnerabilities on you with severity levels and supposedly clear descriptions. Half the time the remediation suggestions are useless, but it does tell you the exact line numbers. Better than nothing when you're trying to figure out why your code is broken.
The audit logs track everything. Who cloned what repo, when they did it, what they changed. Auditors love this stuff. When someone asks "who had access to the customer database schema last Tuesday?", you can actually answer.
Compliance Theater That Works
Data residency keeps your code in specific countries. Your lawyers can tell regulators that EU customer data never leaves EU servers. GitHub Enterprise Cloud offers residency in EU, Australia, and US regions.
Your code stays where your lawyers want it. EU region keeps everything in Germany and Netherlands data centers, Australia uses Sydney, US has multiple zones. Compliance teams love checking this box.
The platform has SOC 2 Type 2 and FedRAMP certifications. Your compliance team can check the boxes they need to check. GitHub does the heavy lifting on security controls so you don't have to.
Real-World Scale Without Breaking
GitHub Enterprise handles massive companies. We're talking 50,000+ repositories, thousands of developers, and CI/CD pipelines that would crash smaller platforms. You get 50,000 Actions minutes and 50GB storage per month included - enough for most enterprises.
Repository rules enforce your development standards across every repo. Require code reviews, block force pushes to main branches, mandate status checks. These rules work at enterprise scale - you set them once and they apply to thousands of repositories.
The bottom line: GitHub Enterprise gives you regular GitHub plus the enterprise controls your security team actually needs. It's expensive but cheaper than explaining to your CEO why customer data leaked because someone committed database credentials.
Of course, that's just the marketing pitch. Wait until you actually try to deploy this thing...
Common culprits: expired certificates (check now), 