Artifact storage quota stuck after deleting repo — "quota has been hit" with 0 artifacts stored

[ValGwen1stHome]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Deployment

Discussion Details

Hi, I'm on GitHub Free and artifact uploads have been blocked for 3+ weeks with:

Failed to CreateArtifact: Artifact storage quota has been hit. Unable to upload any new artifacts.

What I've verified:

• The artifacts API returns zero stored artifacts across all remaining repos on the account (2 private repos).
• The quota was consumed in early September by a repository (Webull-Auto-Trade-Perplexity) that uploaded ~8GB via actions/upload-artifact. That repo has since been deleted.
• Most recent failed upload: Sept 28, on the windows-app workflow of WheelBot-Muse.
• 3+ weeks since deletion — far beyond the 6–12h recalculation window.

Looks like a stuck backend counter still counting the deleted repo. Can the quota be recalculated, or does this need manual intervention?

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[ssuleimenovv]

The counter isn't stuck. It's working as designed, just not the way the error message implies.

Why it still says "quota hit" with 0 artifacts

Actions artifact storage is not billed on what you have stored right now. It's billed on accumulated usage over the billing cycle, in GB-hours. The 6–12h recalculation only affects how fast new hourly usage shows up. It does not refund usage you already accrued.

On Free you get 500 MB for the month, which is about 360 GB-hours (0.5 GB × ~720 h). Your deleted repo held ~8 GB, so it burned through that in roughly 45 hours. Everything after that was over quota. Deleting the repo stopped new usage from accruing, but September's total was already far past the limit, so uploads stay blocked until the cycle resets.

You can confirm this under Settings → Billing and licensing → Usage. Filter by Actions storage and you'll see the spike from early September.

Options

1. Wait for the cycle reset. Usage goes back to zero at the start of your next billing cycle. On Free that's normally the 1st of the month, i.e. the next day or two, and uploads should work again right after.
2. Unblock it now with a budget. Add a payment method and set an Actions budget above $0. Storage overage is cheap (~$0.25/GB-month). Uploads work immediately, and you only pay for what goes over.
3. Make sure it doesn't happen again:

   - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
     with:
       name: windows-app
       path: dist/
       retention-days: 1        # default is 90, which is what eats the quota
       compression-level: 9

You can also lower the default under repo Settings → Actions → General → Artifact and log retention.
For build outputs you want to keep, attach them to a Release instead. Release assets don't count toward Actions storage.
4. Check Packages too. On Free, GitHub Packages (e.g. GHCR images) shares the same 500 MB pool. If you've pushed images from private repos, they count toward the limit even with 0 artifacts.

TL;DR: nothing is broken. September's quota was used up by the 8 GB repo in the first couple of days. It will reset with the new billing cycle, or you can set a small budget to unblock it right away. Set retention-days so it doesn't happen again.