---
title: "New upstream source: GitHub Releases"
description: "You can now proxy and cache binaries, scripts, and other assets directly from GitHub Releases into Cloudsmith."
canonical_url: "https://cloudsmith.com/changelog/proxy-and-cache-from-github-releases"
last_updated: "2026-02-26T19:21:15.622Z"
---
# New upstream source: GitHub Releases

You can now proxy and cache binaries, scripts, and other assets directly from **GitHub Releases** into Cloudsmith. This integration allows you to treat GitHub-hosted assets as a managed part of your internal software supply chain, rather than an external dependency.

## Why this matters

- **High availability:** Cloudsmith caches assets upon the first request. Your binaries remain available even if the source GitHub repository is deleted, is made private, or suffers an outage.
- **Rate limit management:** Serving repeated requests from the Cloudsmith cache preserves your GitHub API quota and prevents CI/CD failures due to "403 Forbidden" errors from GitHub.
- **Governance & visibility:** Centralizing access ensures teams download only approved, trusted versions of third-party assets via a single internal URL.

## How it works

Cloudsmith utilizes the GitHub REST API to retrieve structured release data and assets, ensuring reliability without relying on complex HTML parsing.

When a file is requested through Cloudsmith, the platform will:

1. **Proxy** the call to the corresponding GitHub Release API.
2. **Retrieve** the file from GitHub.
3. **Serve and cache** the file for all future requests.

**Note:** Because GitHub organizes releases by namespace (user/org) and repository, you will typically configure a separate Cloudsmith upstream for each GitHub repository.

## Rate limits and authentication

To ensure a reliable experience and prevent performance bottlenecks, upstreams configured to GitHub Releases require an authentication token. GitHub limits unauthenticated API requests to just 60 per hour per IP address. By providing a GitHub token, you leverage GitHub’s authenticated rate limit of 5,000 requests per hour, ensuring your pipelines remain stable and performant.

For more details, see the official [GitHub REST API Rate Limits](https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api) documentation.

## Get started

To configure an upstream for GitHub Releases, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your repository and select **Upstreams**.
2. Click **Configure new upstream** and select the **Generic** source type.
3. Enter your GitHub Releases URL and your authentication token.

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          "population": 0.18,
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        "dominant": {
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          "population": 0.18,
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      "thumbHash": "uOcBBYAHx4eKhXmFirdIdViegKBI"
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}
```

For more details, please review our [documentation](https://docs.cloudsmith.com/formats/generic-repository).