REST API endpoints for commit statuses

Use the REST API to interact with commit statuses.

About commit statuses

You can use the REST API to allow external services to mark commits with an error, failure, pending, or success state, which is then reflected in pull requests involving those commits. Statuses can also include an optional description and target_url, and we highly recommend providing them as they make statuses much more useful in the GitHub UI.

As an example, one common use is for continuous integration services to mark commits as passing or failing builds using status. The target_url would be the full URL to the build output, and the description would be the high level summary of what happened with the build.

Statuses can include a context to indicate what service is providing that status. For example, you may have your continuous integration service push statuses with a context of ci, and a security audit tool push statuses with a context of security. You can then use the REST API to Get the combined status for a specific reference to retrieve the whole status for a commit.

Note that the repo:status OAuth scope grants targeted access to statuses without also granting access to repository code, while the repo scope grants permission to code as well as statuses.

If you are developing a GitHub App and want to provide more detailed information about an external service, you may want to use the REST API to manage checks. For more information, see REST API endpoints for checks.

Note

Most endpoints use Authorization: Bearer <YOUR-TOKEN> and Accept: application/vnd.github+json headers, plus X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2026-03-10. Curl examples below omit these standard headers for brevity.

Get the combined status for a specific reference

GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits/{ref}/status

Users with pull access in a repository can access a combined view of commit statuses for a given ref. The ref can be a SHA, a branch name, or a tag name.
Additionally, a combined state is returned. The state is one of:

failure if any of the contexts report as error or failure
pending if there are no statuses or a context is pending
success if the latest status for all contexts is success

Parameters

Headers

Path and query parameters

HTTP response status codes

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X GET \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/commits/REF/status

Response schema (Status: 200):

List commit statuses for a reference

GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/commits/{ref}/statuses

Users with pull access in a repository can view commit statuses for a given ref. The ref can be a SHA, a branch name, or a tag name. Statuses are returned in reverse chronological order. The first status in the list will be the latest one.
This resource is also available via a legacy route: GET /repos/:owner/:repo/statuses/:ref.

Parameters

Headers

Path and query parameters

HTTP response status codes

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X GET \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/commits/REF/statuses

Response schema (Status: 200):

Array of Status:

Create a commit status

POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/statuses/{sha}

Users with push access in a repository can create commit statuses for a given SHA.
Note: there is a limit of 1000 statuses per sha and context within a repository. Attempts to create more than 1000 statuses will result in a validation error.

Parameters

Headers

Path and query parameters

Body parameters

HTTP response status codes

Code examples

Example

Request:

curl -L \
  -X POST \
  https://api.github.com/repos/OWNER/REPO/statuses/SHA \
  -d '{
  "state": "success",
  "target_url": "https://example.com/build/status",
  "description": "The build succeeded!",
  "context": "continuous-integration/jenkins"
}'

Response schema (Status: 201):