X-GitHub-Request-Id
The HTTP X-GitHub-Request-Id response header is an unofficial HTTP header containing a unique identifier assigned by GitHub to each request processed through its infrastructure.
Note
The "X-" naming convention for HTTP headers, "X" referring to "experimental", has been deprecated and needs to be transitioned to the formal naming convention for HTTP headers.
Usage
GitHub attaches an X-GitHub-Request-Id header to every response from its API endpoints, web pages, and GitHub Pages-hosted sites. The value is a unique identifier generated per request, useful for correlating client-side observations with server-side logs when reporting issues to GitHub support.
When filing a support ticket or investigating an API failure, including the X-GitHub-Request-Id value helps GitHub's engineering team locate the exact request in their internal logging systems. The header appears alongside other GitHub-specific headers like X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining in API responses.
Values
request-id
The request-id is a string of colon-separated hexadecimal
segments. A typical value contains five segments of varying
length. The segments encode internal routing and timing
information specific to GitHub's infrastructure. The value is
an opaque token intended for log correlation and has no
meaning outside of GitHub's systems.
Example
A response from the GitHub API includes the request identifier as colon-separated hexadecimal values. Each segment represents internal routing metadata. The full value is the identifier to provide when contacting GitHub support.
X-GitHub-Request-Id: E3A2:160030:DC7C75:F76DCA:6990609D
GitHub Pages sites hosted on github.io subdomains return the
same header format. The segment lengths vary between requests,
but the colon-separated structure remains consistent.
X-GitHub-Request-Id: 993D:386006:80F9CB3:84FE8CE:695B15E1
Shorter identifiers appear on some requests, typically from lightweight endpoints. The number of segments and their length depend on the internal service path.
X-GitHub-Request-Id: C36A:2C25F:2965A:2CF72:693B8398
Takeaway
The X-GitHub-Request-Id header provides a unique identifier for every request handled by GitHub's infrastructure. Including this value in support tickets enables precise log correlation on GitHub's side.