Program design updated 2026-09-28; live tier settings last recorded 2026-09-25. Levels 1–9 are published on GitHub Sponsors, each with a tier-specific welcome message. Level 10 is available only through a separate agreement. Levels 1–6 sustain the three named maintenance-focus projects. Levels 7–9 may underwrite a separately scoped, evidence-led pilot from the project lanes below, subject to capacity. The full portfolio retains each project's distinct domain and evidence standards. All prices are USD per month. Recognition is optional; anonymous sponsors receive the same technical reporting.
GitHub permits up to ten monthly tiers but currently caps each at $12,000/month. Levels 1–9 below are live GitHub checkout tiers. Level 10 is a separately contracted strategic stewardship agreement, not a GitHub checkout tier. GitHub's tier rules are authoritative if they change.
| Level | Monthly | Name | Incremental benefit beyond lower levels |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $10 | Backer | Optional name on the central supporter roll; monthly public maintenance digest. |
| 2 | $30 | Practitioner | Invitation to one quarterly group technical briefing on releases, failed tests, and next experiments; written summary if unable to attend. |
| 3 | $100 | Team | Optional organization name and link on the central roll; one briefing seat and access to the shared Q&A record. |
| 4 | $300 | Organization | Optional logo on the central supporter page; up to three briefing seats; quarterly written progress report across the three maintenance-focus projects. |
| 5 | $500 | Domain Supporter | Choose one of the three named focus domains for funding attribution and receive a quarterly domain health note. Attribution does not direct findings or ranking. |
| 6 | $1,000 | Regression Supporter | Acknowledgment on the public regression-suite funding page; quarterly accounting of tests added, failures found, fixes, and unresolved limitations. |
| 7 | $3,000 | Benchmark Underwriter | Underwrite one scoped public benchmark or reproduction package per quarter: protocol, pinned versions, fixture, artifacts, cost account and negative results. Scope and compute ceiling are written before work starts. |
| 8 | $5,000 | Integration Underwriter | Underwrite one scoped public interoperability or reference-integration milestone per quarter: code, tests, documentation and maintenance owner. Scope is written before work starts. |
| 9 | $8,000 | Program Underwriter | A quarterly public plan with two scoped milestones across the named projects, a monthly progress review, and an annual independent reproducibility review. Places are capped by actual delivery capacity. |
| 10 | $20,000 | Strategic Stewardship Partner | Separate signed agreement for a named workstream, capacity, milestones, data/IP terms, monthly delivery review, and quarterly external review. Not offered through GitHub Sponsors. |
Benefits are cumulative where applicable. The monthly digest, quarterly briefing, supporter roll and technical reports are shared outputs, not separate private copies for each sponsor. Briefings use a rotating time slot and a written summary so participation does not depend on one country or time zone. Public reports remain accessible without sponsorship.
For levels 7–9, the sponsor may nominate a problem or workload, but the maintainer chooses the protocol and publishes the acceptance criteria before execution. An underwritten package is a bounded attempt with full results, including failed or inconclusive results; it is not a promise that a product will pass. A quarter's scope must name the repository, workload, deliverables, reviewer, compute limit, publication rights, and substitution procedure if a prerequisite fails. Prospective sponsors should contact the maintainer through the profile's existing contact route before selecting level 7–9 so scope and capacity can be confirmed. A2Z SOC is a separate services site used here only as a contact route.
Level 10 requires a separate statement of work and procurement process. It can cover a dedicated public maintenance stream or a distinct private service, but the agreement must separate those budgets and deliverables. Nothing paid privately changes the public benchmark, reference or security findings. Large organizations needing invoices, regional tax documents, or custom contracting can use the contact route before commitment.
The projects named here remain separate systems with their own theses, owners, tests, and evidence. Sponsor attribution selects a reporting lane; it does not ring-fence cash unless the accounting record explicitly does so. Levels 1–4 support the shared maintenance work across the core trio, not a guaranteed equal split or private engineering hours.
| Tier range | Default project lane | What the report should show |
|---|---|---|
| $10–$300 | GRC Claw, Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Control Loop, and Network Change Intelligence Twin | Maintenance activity, tests, regressions, deferred work, and evidence boundaries across the declared core. |
| $500 | One of the same three projects, selected as a reporting attribution | A quarterly health note for the selected lane. It does not purchase roadmap control or restricted accounting. |
| $1,000 | Core regression work; an additional pilot only after its scope is accepted | Test coverage added, failures reproduced, fixes, unresolved limitations, and exact project/revision tested. |
| $3,000 | One benchmark or reproduction candidate: ApexGraphSwarm, Agentic Graph Swarm Kernel, GraphRAG NP-Hard Kernel, or Swarm Eval Harness | A named workload, baseline, pinned revisions, protocol, acceptance criteria, compute ceiling, result artifacts, and negative results. Selection follows feasibility and reviewer capacity, not repo popularity. |
| $5,000 | One named interoperability pair, agreed before work: ApexGraphSwarm ↔ Agentic Graph Swarm Kernel; GRC Claw ↔ Agent JIT IAM; or the Control Loop ↔ one named cloud adapter | A bounded reference integration with tests, compatibility limits, docs, and a named maintenance owner. No claim of universal compatibility. |
| $8,000 | One program lane with two milestones, normally within one project or a tightly coupled pair | Milestone acceptance, monthly progress, risks, compute and reviewer cost, and an annual independent reproduction review. This remains within the one-new-work-package quarterly capacity cap. |
| Separate agreement | A specifically contracted public workstream or private service | Distinct scope, budget, data/IP terms, capacity, review cadence, publication rights, and deliverables. Private service work does not change public evidence or conclusions. |
These are project-fit options, not a claim that each candidate is currently maintained at the same cadence as the core trio. Before a level 7–9 checkout, publish the accepted project, workload, baseline, owner, reviewer, limit, and deliverables. If no candidate meets those conditions, do not sell that scope that quarter.
GitHub supports one-time tiers separately from monthly tiers. A low-friction design to consider is $10 Thanks, $100 Reproduction Support, and $500 Benchmark Pool. Keep each one-time benefit to public acknowledgment if opted into, transparent use-of-funds reporting, or a shared public result; promise no private consulting, priority access, or guaranteed benchmark outcome. These are recommendations for the account dashboard, not a statement that one-time tiers are currently published.
No level purchases a place in Awesome Computer Science Systems, a favorable benchmark, issue severity, roadmap veto, private vulnerability details or a certification claim. Sponsor logos stay on the supporter page, outside neutral rankings and technical result tables. Disclose ownership and funding alongside any test where a reasonable reviewer would see a conflict. Security reports follow each project's private reporting route; group briefings never expose embargoed details.
The upper levels are capacity-limited: initially accept one new scoped work package across levels 7–9 per quarter until delivery history and funded reviewer capacity support more. One sponsor cannot demand work across every repository. A level-10 agreement is negotiated separately against named capacity and may displace an upper-level opening only if existing commitments remain fulfilled.
If a promised work package cannot be scoped before the next quarter, do not enroll a new underwriter at that level. If an existing scoped milestone becomes impossible, report it promptly, explain why, and agree a replacement or cessation under the applicable sponsorship or contract terms. Monthly reporting must disclose completed, delayed and canceled work. The maintenance record is the public source of truth for delivery, not a dynamic badge or star count.