What the 120 free hours really are, why they are worth 60 real ones, what fits inside the box, and every catch in GitHub's own words
The companion to the reel. Every personal GitHub account — the free one included — carries a monthly Codespaces quota: 120 hours of compute and 15 GB-month of storage, on an Ubuntu machine with a terminal and full VS Code in the browser, opened from a laptop, a Chromebook or an iPad. PAGE 1 — the quota in GitHub's own words, the machine spec (2 cores, 8 GB RAM, 32 GB storage at the small end), where you can open it, and the five steps from a repository to a running box. PAGE 2 — the meter, and the thing most explainers get wrong: the hours are core-hours. GitHub prints an Included usage multiplier of 2 for the 2-core machine, so 120 ÷ 2 = 60 real hours a month; the same table gives 30 on a 4-core and 15 on an 8-core, plus what storage costs and why it is a separate meter from the machine's own disk. PAGE 3 — what runs inside: Claude Code's published requirements (Ubuntu 20.04+, 4 GB+ RAM) set against the free box's spec, the Linux install line, how to make an install survive a rebuild with a devcontainer or dotfiles, what else fits comfortably, and what does not belong here. PAGE 4 — what 60 hours a month actually covers, eight session shapes with the arithmetic printed, the hour you lose to the default 30-minute timeout, and a month that fits. PAGE 5 — eight catches, each quoted from the docs, including the one that makes this safe: with no payment method on file, usage is blocked at the quota instead of billed. PAGE 6 — the proof checklist. Every GitHub figure is quoted from the page it names, read September 17, 2026; the hour arithmetic is 120 ÷ the multiplier GitHub prints. No codespace was created for this card. Independent guide from Hyperautomation Labs — not affiliated with GitHub, Microsoft or Anthropic.
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