Git vs GitHub: what's the difference? (Explained without jargon)

Git is a tool that runs on your computer and saves versions of your project. GitHub is a website that stores those versions online so you can back them up and share them. Git does the remembering. GitHub is where the memory lives on the internet. You can use Git without GitHub, but GitHub doesn’t work without Git.

A simple comparison

Think of a camera and a photo-sharing site.

• Git is the camera. It takes a snapshot of your whole project whenever you tell it to. The snapshots are stored on your own computer.
• GitHub is the photo site. You upload the snapshots there. Now they’re backed up, other people can see them if you allow it, and you can get to them from any device.

	Git	GitHub
What it is	A program	A website and service
Where it runs	On your computer	On the internet
Made by	Linus Torvalds, in 2005	A company founded in 2008, owned by Microsoft since 2018
Needs internet	No	Yes
Cost	Free and open source	Free for most personal use
Main job	Save and compare versions	Store, share and collaborate on them

What Git does

Git watches a folder. When you tell it to commit, it records the state of every file in that folder, along with a note from you. Later you can:

• see exactly what changed between any two commits
• go back to any earlier commit
• make a branch, a separate line of work, to try an idea safely
• merge that branch back in if the idea works

All of this happens on your computer, with no account and no internet.

What GitHub adds

GitHub takes the history Git made and puts it online. That gives you:

• Backup. If your computer is lost, the project isn’t.
• Sharing. Send someone a link instead of a zip file.
• Collaboration. Other people can propose changes through a pull request, and you can discuss them before accepting.
• A readable view. History, changes and files are easy to browse on the website.
• Automation. Hosting services can publish your site when the repository changes, and checks can run on every change.

GitHub isn’t the only site that does this. GitLab and Bitbucket are similar services. They all use Git underneath.

How they work together

A normal day looks like this:

1. You change some files.
2. Git: you commit. A snapshot is saved on your computer.
3. GitHub: you push. The snapshot is uploaded.
4. Someone else, or you on another computer, pulls to get the latest version.

Commit is local. Push is online. If you remember only that, you understand the split.

Which one should you learn first?

Learn them together, starting from the GitHub side. That sounds backwards, but it’s easier:

• Create a repository on github.com and edit a file in the browser. You’ll make commits without installing anything.
• Then install GitHub Desktop, a free app that gives you buttons for commit, push and pull.
• Pick up the Git commands later, when you want to. An AI assistant can run them for you and explain what each one does.

I wrote a first-hour plan in everyone should learn GitHub.

Why this matters if you use AI

AI assistants change many files quickly. Git is what lets you undo that safely, and GitHub is where most AI coding tools and hosting services connect to your project.

Every project on this site works this way. Each game in my arcade is a Git repository on GitHub. Pushing a commit is what puts a new version live, and going back to an older version is how I recover from a bad one. The first of my habits for building with AI is to commit before every request, and that habit only exists because Git makes it cheap.

Quick answers

Do I need GitHub to use Git? No. Git works alone on your computer.

Do I need Git to use GitHub? In practice, yes. You can do simple edits on the website, but GitHub is built on Git.

Are they made by the same people? No. Git is an open-source project started by the creator of Linux. GitHub is a company.

Is GitHub only for programmers? No. Anything that is mostly text files works well: writing, notes, websites and documentation.

What’s a “repo”? Short for repository: a project folder with its full history. It exists on your computer through Git, and online through GitHub.