Secrets reference

Find technical information about secrets in GitHub Actions.

In this article

Naming your secrets

Tip

To help ensure that GitHub redacts your secrets in logs correctly, avoid using structured data as the values of secrets.

The following rules apply to secret names:

  • Can only contain alphanumeric characters ([a-z], [A-Z], [0-9]) or underscores (_). Spaces are not allowed.
  • Must not start with the GITHUB_ prefix.
  • Must not start with a number.
  • Are case insensitive when referenced. GitHub stores secret names as uppercase regardless of how they are entered.
  • Must be unique to the repository, organization, or enterprise where they are created.

If a secret with the same name exists at multiple levels, the secret at the lowest level takes precedence. For example, if an organization-level secret has the same name as a repository-level secret, then the repository-level secret takes precedence. Similarly, if an organization, repository, and environment all have a secret with the same name, the environment-level secret takes precedence.

Limits for secrets

You can store up to 1,000 organization secrets, 100 repository secrets, and 100 environment secrets.

A workflow created in a repository can access the following number of secrets:

  • All 100 repository secrets.
  • If the repository is assigned access to more than 100 organization secrets, the workflow can only use the first 100 organization secrets (sorted alphabetically by secret name).
  • All 100 environment secrets.

Secrets are limited to 48 KB in size. To store larger secrets, see Using secrets in GitHub Actions.

When GitHub Actions reads secrets

Organization and repository secrets are read when a workflow run is queued, and environment secrets are read when a job referencing the environment starts.

Automatically redacted secrets

GitHub automatically redacts the following sensitive information from workflow logs.

  • 32-byte and 64-byte Azure keys
  • Azure AD client app passwords
  • Azure Cache keys
  • Azure Container Registry keys
  • Azure Function host keys
  • Azure Search keys
  • Database connection strings
  • HTTP Bearer token headers
  • JWTs
  • NPM author tokens
  • NuGet API keys
  • v1 GitHub installation tokens
  • v2 GitHub installation tokens (ghp, gho, ghu, ghs, ghr)
  • v2 GitHub PATs