GitHub Actions "Artifact storage quota has been hit"

By Daniel Zoghalchali·Latchkey

Artifacts (and caches) count against your account's Actions storage allowance; once that quota is exhausted, new uploads are rejected until old storage is freed or the limit is raised.

What this error means

upload-artifact fails noting the artifact storage quota has been hit, and uploads stop succeeding across the org until storage is reduced.

Error: Artifact storage quota has been hit. Delete some artifacts or increase the storage limit.

Common causes

Large or long-retained artifacts pile up

Big artifacts kept with long retention accumulate and consume the storage allowance.

Frequent uploads across many repos

High-volume uploads org-wide exhaust the shared quota faster than retention clears them.

How to fix it

Reduce and bound storage

1. Lower retention-days on artifacts that do not need long life.
2. Upload only what downstream jobs actually need.
3. Delete old artifacts via the API/UI to reclaim space.
4. Raise the org storage limit if the usage is legitimate.

- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: logs
    path: logs/
    retention-days: 3

How to prevent it

• Set short retention for ephemeral artifacts.
• Upload minimal, necessary artifacts only.
• Monitor org Actions storage usage.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

References

• GitHub Actions documentation
• Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions