CircleCI has identified a billing issue in which builds from forked projects consume credits from the parent project's organization under specific conditions. This article explains when this occurs and what you can do if you're affected.

Builds from a forked project will consume credits from the parent project's organization when:

The owner of the forked project is a member of the parent project's organization

This means that if a user forks your project while being part of your organization, their builds on that fork will use your organization's credits.

This billing behavior may affect open source projects where external contributors fork the repository. However, CircleCI offers generous credit allocations for open source projects:

These open-source credits help ensure that community contributions don't significantly affect your organization's credit usage.

For organizations where developers regularly contribute via forks, this may not cause issues. However, this behavior can create unexpected credit consumption for organizations with specific development workflows.

If you believe your organization's credit consumption is affected by this situation, contact CircleCI Support. Please reference this article in your support request.